Mass Effect: Beginnings
by Lilivati
Summary: "Spectres, well, that's what they look for- initiative, sound judgment, a dash of insanity." My novelization of Mass Effect 1, featuring Commander Nathaly Shepard and the rest of the crew, with an eventual Shenko romance. This fic takes a deeper dive into the story and characters, as well as adding or altering some events.
1. Chapter 1

The barrel of the assault rifle never wavered as the commander asked, calmly, "I'm sure you're aware of your options. How's it going to be?"

The woman behind the desk glanced, with ill-concealed nerves, between the N7 markings on the soldier's armor, the gun, and the blue eyes only just visible behind the polycarbonate mask of the breather helmet. Still, she spoke with lazy contempt bordering on defiance. "This isn't Alliance space. This isn't even Council space. This is the _Terminus_, Commander. You have no authority here."

"That's where it gets a bit murky," the soldier agreed. The heat sink indicator was fading to blue now, but Shepard didn't need it. The ease in the trigger was enough to alert her that the gun was once again serviceable. That was Visagie's first mistake- sitting in shock when she first entered the room, even though the shots just prior were readily audible. "The problem is, there's no extraditing authority within the Terminus, and your terrorist network stretches all the way back to Sol. So instead of a polite diplomatic incident and cushy negotiated transfer, you get me."

"Do you honestly believe the Council will stand for Alliance interference here?" Visagie stood as she spoke, her right hand reaching for a drawer, casually.

Shepard released a brief burst of fire into the desk. Visagie let go fast. "That's more like it. You think anyone has any sympathy for you, Visagie? You blew up a ship full of colonists. Families. You're what makes humanity look bad to the rest of the galaxy. What I'm doing just proves the Alliance can muzzle its own dogs- assuming they ever let you see enough sunlight again for this to make it to the Council's ears, which seems unlikely."

Visagie switched tactics. "We're very well funded."

"I'm bored of talking to you. I'm no assassin, but don't believe for a moment I won't shoot you if you fail to cooperate. Let's go." Shepard jerked her head towards the door. She could hear her backup coming down the hall.

Visagie lowered her head, defeated. Shepard didn't buy it for a minute as the woman shuffled around the desk, before attempting to ram Shepard with her shoulder and make a break for it.

Shepard was ready for it, and stepped back to avoid the attack while bringing the butt of her rifle down between the woman's shoulder blades. Visagie stumbled, half-sprawling, through the door. There was a surprised shout, and then several shots in rapid succession. The woman was gone before she hit the floor.

"Aw, hell." Shepard shouldered the rifle and stuck her head out into the hall. "Somebody want to explain what in blazes just happened?"

The operative straightened, chagrined, holstering his pistol. Shepard recognized him as one of the upper ranked trainees from ICT. "She was coming straight at us, ma'am."

"Her network is _still active_, lieutenant. We needed her intel. She was ready to cut a deal with me, she would have talked." Shepard was frustrated enough to strangle the man herself. "You couldn't have restrained her?"

"She looked like she had a weapon," he replied, defensive. His stance was rigid, not meeting her narrowed eyes.

"Right." The lieutenant flinched at her sarcasm. Shepard stalked past him without a second glance and activated her com. "Ready for pick-up. We need a clean-up crew."

Later, back on the ship in an even fouler mood, she was called into the com room for a transmission. Captain Anderson's face flickered into life. Shepard saluted. "Sir."

"Commander," he greeted her, his tone relaxed. "Do you have our package?"

"Only if you wanted it on ice."

"Dammit." Anderson was more weary than angry. "What went wrong?"

"Lieutenant Buchar got a little jumpy when our girl tried break free, and he's a regrettably good shot." Shepard scowled.

"Buchar? The new N6, first time tagging along on a big boy run?"

"That's him." She shook her head. "I know the mission rarely goes according to plan, but…"

"Permission to speak freely, commander. I'd like to know your thoughts."

She looked up at the holo. "Goddammit, sir, but I am tired of these kinds of screw-ups. He was shaky from the moment we left the Mako, but the pussyfooting major back on the ship countermanded my order for him to stay back. Because what in the bloody hell does a marine on the ground know about running an op, right?"

"You're frustrated by the limits of your authority," he extrapolated.

"Damn right I am," she muttered. Shepard cleared her throat, and added, more loudly, "Sir."

"It's about time."

Her expression changed from frustration to puzzlement. "Excuse me, sir?"

"I said, it's about time." Anderson chuckled. "Truth is, you've been ready for more for awhile, Shepard. Which brings me to the point of this conversation- your new orders. I'm uploading information on Project: Dark Skies to your omnitool now."

She gave it a glance, but didn't open the files. There would be plenty of time to peruse them later- it was a long haul back to Arcturus. "Give me the rundown."

"For several years now, I've been heading up an initiative charged with expanding Alliance hardware capabilities in new directions. We're living in an intragalactic world now, Commander. There's a lot of threats out there, and a lot we can learn from our allies. That search eventually led to the ship you're about to discover."

"A new ship?" Her confusion deepened. She thumbed an icon and a holo of a sleek craft, unlike any she'd seen in the Alliance fleet, opened a few inches over her forearm. "Sir, with all due respect, I specialize in small, targeted operations. Long term service aboard a frigate-"

"This is a classified vessel whose mission should be right in line with your experience. I'm recommending you for XO. I need somebody on my team who understands how spec ops should be done." He smiled broadly. "Congratulations, commander."

She drew herself to attention and saluted. "Thank you, sir."

"Don't screw up." Anderson reached forward to hit the switch. "Anderson out."

/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\

Four days later, Nathaly Shepard waved her omnitool at the fare meter and stepped out into the cold midday sun of Mars. The house looked like every other home on the tidy, narrow streets just off-base- a postage stamp of a rock garden lawn, white painted contoured sides of the pre-fab going tan under this season's dust, Alliance flag hanging limply beside the door. The only thing that really set it apart was the lack of children's toys scattered in the yard and the rusty toolbox in the drive next to the car.

She frowned at that a moment, then shook her head and walked to the door. She cut an imposing figure on the street- tall, especially for a woman, athletic, and dressed in jeans, combat boots, and a faded brown leather jacket that had formed itself to the shape of her body over the years. A pistol sat easy at her hip and she moved with a lazy, competent confidence that would have sent lesser mammals scurrying for their burrows. A much-abused duffle bag banged against her thigh. Her red hair fell with a soft curl to just past her shoulders past dusky cheeks smattered with freckles. Shepard's eyes were more bored than weary, as she rapped her knuckles against the hatch. It was a long trip.

There was some shuffling from inside the house, the sound of a lock being drawn, before the door slid aside. The man was nearing sixty, with a salt-and-pepper mustache and deep bronze skin a few shades darker than the woman's, and his height several centimeters less. He broke into a smile, exacerbating the wrinkles at his eyes and mouth, though his tone was reproachful. "Zey-Zey. You could have called, you know."

"Hi, dad." Shepard returned his embrace. "You know what it's like trying to make a ship-to-residence call. Besides, I didn't have a lot of warning."

Paul Shepard made a tchting sound and stepped aside to let her in. The interior of the house was comfortably run-down- faded carpets, sagging couch, paint peeling off the kitchen chairs. Photographs lined the walls. Some were of family, Paul, his wife, and their daughter, taken on various bases and vacations all over the galaxy. Others were from their glory days in the Alliance, old friends and comrades-in-arms, old ships. Shepard had a whole wall in the kitchen to herself, running the gambit from her first birthday to her promotion to commander two years ago, the virtue and embarrassment of an only child.

The space over the table, however, was dominated by portraits of her grandparents, a sort of honorarium to those gone before. Her maternal grandparents she never knew well, but the paternal set half-raised her in her earliest years, while her parents juggled deployments with their familial duties. Shepard smiled fleetingly at Zelena Goya Shepard, her middle namesake, a woman whose outspoken temerity was as well known in their small town back on Earth as her secret mole sauce. Shepard never managed to quite grasp the recipe, though sometime in her preteen years her father mysteriously began nailing it with unfailing accuracy. She suspected either black magic or a really juicy bit of family gossip paved the way.

Paul searched the fridge for a couple of beers. "So what brings you back to Hellas? I doubt you want to spend your shore leave visiting your old man."

Shepard was twenty-eight. Old enough that shore leave no longer consisted of a few days of black-out drinking followed by a few days of throwing up, but she was still more inclined to spend the time relaxing and partying with her friends than on more sedate pursuits. "I have a mission, actually."

"On Mars?" He was surprised, and with good reason. Shepard didn't exactly do logistics or fleet support.

"It's classified." She opened drawers, poking around for a bottle opener. "They've been building some kind of new frigate. I'm here to train for the shake-down, for the next three weeks."

Since the earliest days of its existence, the greatest shipyards of the Alliance were found on Mars. The plentiful resources, proximity to the asteroid belt mining operations, and relatively low gravity without the hazards of vacuum or zero-g made it ideal.

"That's not a usual assignment for a hot-shot N7 operative," Paul observed.

She flushed. Her father's pride occasionally offended her modesty. Shepard popped the cap off her beer and took a long draw. "Yeah, well. It's Anderson's baby. He sort of went and made me XO."

His surprise showed. Her mother was also an executive officer, albeit aboard a much larger ship, and it took half her career to get there. "Congratulations."

"Thanks," she replied, somewhat awkwardly. She still wasn't sure what to make of the posting.

Paul recovered somewhat, and patted his daughter's cheek with patronizing affection, exaggerated for effect. "It couldn't have happened to a nicer girl."

"Oh, for god's sake, dad." She set down the drink and shrugged off the jacket, laying it over a chair. "I actually came to pick up my car. Speaking of which…"

"Oh, that." He rolled his eyes. "There was a noise in the engine. You know how it is."

She did know how it was, but she was still horrified. "You have her up on blocks in your driveway."

He waved a hand. "It's nothing."

"Dad, I swear-"

"You asked me to keep her in good condition," he said, indignant. "I'm doing exactly that. You're not around to drive her. She's only a little younger than you. She gets a little rattle from time to time, I check it out."

Shepard tried not to lose her patience. The 2160 Fire Starter was her pride and joy, bought with all of her signing bonus plus all her savings from her high school job when she enlisted ten years ago. Though a commercial model, it was a favorite of canyon racing leagues on Mars for its handling and superior traction and cornering. It also predated most standard safety features that made modern cars dull in comparison, in Shepard's estimation. "It's a classic, you have to be careful with it."

He gave her a wry glance. "Zey-Zey, sweetheart, I was fixing just about everything that can break on a ship years before you were born. You ever try to piece together a Mako retrorocket from scrap metal? I can get the crap out of your fussy little car without scratching the paint, don't worry."

"Can I at least pull out the blocks and let it sit on the stabilizers?"

"Well…" He dithered, taking another gulp of his beer.

"Oh my god." Shepard made for the door.

Her father trailed after her. "Zey-Zey, it's not as bad as it looks."

She popped open the hood and her eyes went wide. "The hell have you done to my car?"

He put his arm around her shoulders. "Look, just give me the afternoon. You'll never know the difference. I promise."

They spent the rest of the day happily bickering over the requirements to fix the car while polishing off the rest of the six pack as the evening chill crept in. The tenting of Hellas in the 40s, back when terraforming still seemed the way of the future, in addition to the orbital mirror made the settlement habitable, but it never really got warm.

Like all these projects always go, it got worse before it got better. At one point seemingly half the engine was in pieces on the drive. However, by the time the last of the light was fading from the planitia, Shepard was able to climb in, thumb the starter, and hear it roar to life. It lifted onto all four stabilizers without sidling and held level.

Shepard managed to conceal her sigh of relief from her father, who was beaming with satisfaction from the yard. He was good with machines- none better, in fact- but occasionally his curiosity and sense of invention got the better of him. She ran her hand over the dash, a soothing gesture, and checked the hepatic interface. All systems were reporting green. The controls didn't feel sluggish, either. Call it a success.

Paul went in to start dinner while she took it around the block for a check-out. What she wanted was to get it out on the planitia, without any roads or speed limits, where the engine could really open up, but some pleasures would have to wait for another time. The training schedule should leave a few spare hours here and there.

She polished a smudge off the cherry red paint with the hem of her grease-stained shirt and went inside.

The smell of toasting bread greeted her. Her father was a better cook than you'd expect, but most of the time he preferred easy to gourmet. Shepard washed her hands, found plates and bowls, and set them out on the table. Paul ladled out tomato soup and slid two grilled cheese sandwiches straight from the frying pan to the plates.

"Are you staying here, or up at the base?" her father asked, between bites.

"Probably the base. Looks like they're going to have us in training a good twelve to sixteen hours every day. Most of the crew's already been here six months, but they need to get the rest of the officers up to speed fast. The design's apparently pretty radical by Alliance standards."

"Good. It's about time they started thinking outside the box." Paul's complaints about design inefficiency in the fleet were legendary to those who knew him. Shepard thought, dryly, that she could recite most of them by heart.

Nevertheless, he seemed ready to launch into yet another recounting. "I kept telling them, you gotta pay attention to the maneuverability-"

Paul was interrupted by a spate of wet coughing that shook his body and left him gasping for air. Shepard handed him a paper towel to wipe his mouth. He took it, gratefully, and slipped a container of pills out of his pocket and gulped down two.

"It's getting worse, isn't it," she stated, quietly. It wasn't a question.

"The docs up at the VA told me I need to take it easy. They want me to get some kind of fancy humidifier system for the house. Say it'll help with inflammation and breathing." He made a small sound of disgust. "I told them, I'm fine. It's been like this for more than a dozen years now. I'm used to it."

When Shepard was a teenager, her father was assigned to a carrier ship that had a gasket go bad on the shuttle bay airlock. A small crew inside was trying to fix the problem so they could get a limping bird through to the hanger when the cabin suddenly vented to space. Luckily, they got help quickly and there were no fatalities, but the rapid decompression left her father with severe joint and lung problems. He was honorably discharged on disability and ended up settling on Mars, in a naval community where he could feel at home. She spent the latter part of her high school years here with him and, in a sense, it became home to her, too. This tiny prefab was the closest thing she had to a permanent address.

"Maybe you should look into it. If it makes you even a little more comfortable…"

"Screw that." He sat back and folded his arms. "I don't want a bunch of medical techs messing with my house. That's how it starts. Next thing you know, they'll have a fancy hospital bed installed and some kind of nurse coming around to count my shits."

"How much does it cost?" Shepard asked, rather more shrewdly than her father would have liked.

"Zey-Zey-"

"I'm not a little girl, dad. If I can help, I want to."

"Nathaly Zelena." He reached across the table and covered her hand with his. "It's fine. Really. You have your own life, I don't want or need you worrying about mine."

She sighed, but let the subject drop, making a mental note to look into the system when she had a chance.

/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\

Sunrise was still a dream of the future when Shepard set off for the base. At this hour, even the few cops on patrol were too sleepy to care, and she managed to top 150 kph before the bends in the road started feeling too hard to trust. She loved old sci-fi classics as a kid. There was something delightfully quaint in reading how people over two hundred years ago thought living in space would be, especially when you happened to be reading it from the comforts of a station observation deck, or tearing across the surface of a foreign planet.

Now, driving near-silently past red hills in the frigid Martian pre-dawn, stars still pricked out in silver thread against the sky, she recalled Bradbury's description of a similar ride, and on a whim called up the passage from the car's sync with her omnitool. The narrator's voice was surprisingly hushed, mellow, striking exactly the right chord. _"There was the smell of Time in the air tonight. He smiled and turned the fancy in his mind. There was a thought. What did Time smell like? Like dust and clocks and people. And if you wondered what Time sounded like it sounded like water running in a cave and voices crying and dirt dropping down on hollow box lids, and rain. And, going further, what did Time look like? Time looked like snow dropping silently into a black room or it looked like a silent film in an ancient theater, one hundred billion faces falling like those New York balloons, down and down into nothing. That was how Time smelled and looked and sounded. And tonight-Tomas shoved a hand into the wind outside the truck-tonight you could almost touch Time."_

The ruins of the Protheans were hundreds of klicks south of here, inside the quarantine zone that protected them from development and access by non-approved personnel. Shepard often wondered what Mars looked like to them- did they erect the same towering crystal spires envisioned by so many humans, laid to waste in the intervening fifty thousand years, or did they just carve our underground bunkers and watch humanity through interplanetary binoculars, waiting for… something. There had to be reason for their interest. Or perhaps their resources were simply so vast that this was a tiny outpost manned by a few crackpot scientists who found the lumbering cavemen a particular fascination. She wasn't sure whether that notion was more funny or sad.

The car pulled into the personnel lot on base, and Shepard submitted to the requisite scan with a trace of regret. She loved her job, but moments to herself, unrestrained and free, floating in the space between one obligation and the next, were rare. That was the whole reason for the car. Sometimes she needed to be alone with herself and the speed and think.

The guard threw her a salute. "You're free to proceed, ma'am. Lot B if you don't mind."

She returned the salute and found a parking space.

The sun was just starting to peek over the horizon as she walked through the doors. Anderson was waiting to collect her. "There you are, Shepard."

She glanced at the holo on the wall displaying the time. "I didn't think I was late."

"No, though I suppose I should have expected you to stay off-base." Anderson was an old friend of her mother's in addition to being something of a mentor to Shepard.

She kept pace as he led her through the warrens of the base. "Don't worry. I'm moving in today."

"Good." He glanced over her with something like resignation. "I guess it was too much to hope you might pull out your service uniform instead of utilities."

"Sorry, sir, but I thought we were going to do some real work today, not just show off."

Anderson stopped and favored her with a glare. "I know you're used to commanding small squads in the field, but this is the big leagues, Shepard. I've assured my superiors that you're ready for it. You're a helluva a soldier and smarter than your own good, but you need to learn a little diplomacy and above all you need to see to that mouth of yours, if you want to play on this level. Don't let me down."

She pulled herself to attention, a touch stiffly, and offered another salute. "My apologies, sir. It won't happen again."

"That's what I like to hear." He opened a door off the hallway and held it for her with old-fashioned courtesy. "We'll be meeting with the other officers first for a briefing. Then we'll move on to the training sim and you can meet the rest of the crew."

It was a tiny conference room with a table and eight chairs, coffee maker, and an image of the _SSV Normandy SR-1 _primed on the holo display on the far wall. The people scattered around the table immediately stood at attention as Shepard and Anderson entered.

"At ease," Anderson said, comfortably. Shepard knew he'd handpicked most of the crew. The _Normandy _was a pet project, one he shepherded personally from funding to design all the way to this, its maiden voyage, usually fighting politics with one hand and budget with the other. Its success would be a make-or-break moment in an already distinguished career.

He gestured towards her. "Everyone, I'd like you to meet Lieutenant Commander Nathaly Shepard, who will be joining us as my executive officer. Most of you are familiar with her record. Unfortunately, she was unable to join us earlier due to a classified commitment in the Traverse. I wish we had another five of her, but she's here now."

"Classified commitment in the Traverse" was apparently the new Alliance slang for their quasi-legal ventures into the Terminus, but she kept her amusement to herself. Anderson was going around the room. "May I introduce Navigator Charles Pressly, our guide for the duration… our chief medical officer Dr. Karin Chakwas, Chief Engineer Greg Adams, an expert on the Tantalus drive core…"

Shepard exchanged nods as Anderson continued down the line. "Staff Lieutenant Kaidan Alenko, who will be commanding our marine detail, and last but not least our chief helmsmen, Flight Lieutenant Jeff Moreau."

"I read through your dossiers on the inbound flight to Mars," she said, folding her hands behind her back and looking at them directly. "It's an impressive group. I look forward to working with you all."

"Let's get down to brass tacks," Adams said, cuing up the display. "The _Normandy's_ not like any other ship in the fleet."

Shepard took a seat and accepted a cup of coffee passed her way by Chakwas. "I noticed that. It looked almost turian in the run-down I got."

Adams nodded, pleased. "As you know, it was a joint venture, and it shows. But she's got plenty of human in her too. Let's start with the stealth system, since that's certainly her flashiest feature…"

Shepard had the knack of multitasking. It was a necessity in her line of work. So while part of her brain focused on Adams' lecture, another was looking around the table, matching faces to the dossiers and updating her initial assessments. Chakwas, seated across from her, was doing a credible job of appearing attentive, though there was little to interest her in the arcana of ship design. She was easily the most experienced member of the crew outside Anderson himself. At her age, most doctors, even in the military, opted to settle down in hospitals or private practice, and she wondered if Chakwas was here by preference or as a favor to the captain.

To her left was Pressly, another older man, who immediately screamed "stuffy old guard" to her military sensibilities. He was the kind of person she could have impressed by showing up in a higher grade of uniform, with shined shoes and medals on display. Maybe that was what Anderson was trying to tell her in the hall- from this point forward there would be more officers like Pressly than like herself. The whole thing was a game, and Anderson wanted her to learn how to play. Why, she wasn't exactly sure yet.

Adams was still talking, gesturing from time to time at the cut-out drawings and vids he threw up on the display. He was another experienced officer, having served on as many kinds of ships as the Alliance had to offer, and reputably knew them each inside and out. His enthusiasm for his work was obvious. Nobody could ask for a better man to manage an experimental drive system. Apparently, in the late phases of the Tantalus' drafting, he was working with the design team directly, human and turian alike. If the _Normandy _was Anderson's baby, Adams was her midwife.

Past him, near the front of the table on her side, was Lieutenant Alenko. Alenko, Moreau, and herself represented the younger half of the _Normandy's _leadership. Of all the dossiers, his record stood out as the strangest. Alenko joined the Alliance later than most, with an education that should have routed him to a support role or even design work, but instead he chose a combat division, and apparently done well for himself there. He was also a biotic, which would have been odd enough on its own, with a record of serious and dedicated service, and indeed, he was taking in Adams' lecture now with a small frown of concentration.

Contrast that with the pilot, seated next to her, who was doodling a pornographic cartoon on his datapad. He caught her glance and waggled his eyebrows. Shepard had to bite her lip to avoid laughing.

"Joker," Anderson's voice suddenly snapped out, interrupting Adams. "Care to illuminate us on how you plan to get around the FTL flaw in the stealth system?"

Moreau, apparently better known as Joker, fumbled after a response. Shepard turned her attention back to the meeting fully. There would be enough time to evaluate the crew later.


	2. Chapter 2

"Congratulations, Jenkins, you're dead." Shepard rubbed her hand against her helmet and avoided the urge to lay into the corporal. But, holy hell, was it that hard to check your freaking hard suit seals before cycling an air lock? The little crap was killing them, and this Mako was too damn small to hold her temper.

Jenkins swallowed. "Sorry, ma'am."

"Sorry won't save your ass if you do that on a real planetfall." She glanced back at Alenko, who simply shook his head, looking as frustrated as she felt. "Privates Crosby and Chase were able to get this on the first go. This is what, our seventh attempt?"

Jenkins stared at the wall.

Alenko leaned forward. "Hey, Jenkins, look at me. There's no reason to freak out just because you've got the XO sitting next to you. We've done this sim a hundred times. You just have to go slow and easy, remember your training, check over everything."

He pulled himself together a bit, straightening in his couch. "Yes, sir."

Shepard pressed the com to her ear. "Set it up again."

"Aye aye, commander." Joker's cheerful voice filled the Mako. Nothing ever seemed to try his patience.

As they waited for the sim to reset, feeling a bit of a heel, she glanced over at the corporal. "Hey. Look, you trained with the rest of your squad. If they can do it, so can you." She relaxed into the couch and shut her eyes. "And don't ask Anderson about the first time I had to practice an emergency shuttle evac. Or the second."

"I don't know, sounds like a pretty good story." Alenko, catching on to what she was trying to do, fed right into her plan.

Shepard sighed with only a touch of dramatic exaggeration. "I couldn't find the pull for my chute. The wind tore it out of my hand a half second after the jump, and no matter how I flailed I couldn't get a grip on it. Without my jump partner, I would have been a crater in the ground."

"And I bet they called you crater for the next few months, too."

"Meatsplat, actually." She made a face. "Second Lieutenant Nathaly Meatsplat."

"No way," Jenkins said, a categorical denial. "I mean, you're Shepard."

She held up the first three fingers of her hand in a gesture of fidelity. "We all start somewhere, corporal."

Joker's voice crackled over the com again. "We're ready whenever you are, commander."

Shepard hid her grinding teeth behind a forced smile. "Let's go."

/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\

Later, in the mess, Joker stopped her a moment. "That was a nice thing you did for the kid."

She shrugged and held out her tray for a ladle of peas. "He needed some encouragement. It wasn't the kind of situation where riding his ass was going to make anything better."

"Heh. Sounded like you were about to explode for a minute there."

"For a minute there, I was." She shook her head. "Usually the people I work with already know what the hell they're about. ICT weeds out the slow remarkably fast. And usually I'm not trapped in sims for days at a time. My temper's running a bit short."

"Yeah, I think we all got that," Joker replied, a little too quickly, and it made her wonder exactly how short her fuse had gotten over the last week and a half. The _Normandy _was set to launch in five days. Their quarters were about to get a lot more confined and their mission a lot more urgent.

Maybe she needed to ease off the gas a bit. "Hey, Joker? Thanks."

"Don't go getting all sentimental on me, Commander." He flashed her the kind of impertinent smile that was practically his trademark, just this side of insubordinate without ever sticking so much as a hair over the line. "We might start thinking spec ops marines are, like, human or something."

"We wouldn't want that. It might overload my AI circuitry." She smirked. "I hear the last guy's mech brain exploded all over the deck. Eezo _everywhere_."

His grin widened. "You know what? You're alright, Commander."

They carried their trays to an open table and started to eat. Shepard jerked her chin towards him. "What's up with the leg braces? You crash a ship or something?"

He stared at her a moment, blinking, as if what she said crossed even his lax boundaries. "Very funny."

"I'm sorry?" She was lost.

"Mocking my disease while insulting my abilities as a pilot." He sat back and crossed his arms. "Gotta say, that's a new personal low."

"Disease? Is it catching?"

"What?" It was his turn to be confused. "Aw, hell. You have no earthly idea what I'm talking about, do you? I thought you read our dossiers."

"I did." She sat back as well, sipping at her glass of water, and gave him a very dry glance. "Believe it or not, private medical records are not included, 'cause I don't need to know how many times you've gotten syphilis after shore leave."

He waggled his eyebrows at her, a wouldn't-you-like-to-know gesture, but then sighed. "Figures I'd go and open my big mouth. Fine. Here's the rundown- I have Vrolik's syndrome, also known as brittle bone disease." Joker made air quotes with an expression of disdain. "Congenital. My leg bones never developed properly. They're basically hollow. They break really easily if I'm not careful."

"That sounds like something gene mods would fix easily."

"Maybe. The cause isn't known. But even if it's genetic, it's really rare. There's no funding in curing illnesses that only affect a few thousand births a year. Even if they developed a cure now, I'm probably too old to correct anything this systemic with gene therapy."

Shepard quirked a brow. "How the hell did you enlist with something like that hanging over you?"

"Wouldn't take no for an answer." He smiled grimly. "Look, commander, I'm the best damn pilot in this fleet. Top of my class in flight school? All those commendations in my file? I earned that. The Alliance isn't a charity."

"I never said-"

Joker leaned forward and banged his fist on the table, making the silverware clatter. "I can do my job just as well as anyone else on the crew. Put the _Normandy _in my hands, and I'll have her dancing. I don't need you worrying about me."

She held up her hands in surrender. "Never fear, lieutenant. I'll be sure to ride your ass just as hard as everyone else."

"Damn right you will," he answered smugly.

"In fact, now that you've made it so clear you're up for a challenge, I might have to think up something special for you." She rubbed her chin thoughtfully. "Maybe the next time we're practicing maneuvers, I'll ask the sim team to break engines on both sides."

Joker scoffed and returned his attention to his dinner. "Bring it. The _Normandy's_ a beautiful ship. She and I can take whatever you dish out."

/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\

Shepard didn't tire easily, but she felt like her head was swimming as she headed outside for a quick run before bed. Her memory was damn near photographic, a useful skill for someone who typically had to get up to speed on both squads and situations in no time flat- most of her N7 missions came up with little to no warning. But Adams wasn't kidding when he said the _Normandy _was different. Wrapping her head around whole new theories of operations was a challenge, and her new role wasn't coming quite as easily as she hoped.

The cool stillness of twilight was welcome after the chaos of the day. Physical exertion was a routine part of her life, and her muscles felt downright cramped after spending all day cooped up in a Mako mock-up getting a feel for the crew and reviewing procedures. She plopped down on the sidewalk and started stretching out.

There were footsteps on the pavement, and Alenko rounded the corner of the building, slowing to a halt and checking the diagnostics on his omnitool. He clearly didn't see her in the shadow of the entrance.

"Hey," she said, to catch his attention.

He jumped a bit, startled, but recovered quickly. "Commander."

"I see we had the same idea." There was a note of approval in her voice. If he was supposed to be directing their marines, he damn well better be able to keep up with her.

"Seems like it. I'm just about done though." He gestured at a spot next to her. "You mind?"

At a shake of her head, and he sat down and started going through cool-down stretches. She found herself in a mood to talk. "You always go for a run at night?"

Alenko shrugged. His dark hair hung limply over his forehead, slowly drying now that he was sitting in the light breeze. "I mix it up a bit. Some days the gym, some days a run. It gets boring otherwise. You?"

"Having a place to run is a luxury. The Alliance isn't big on providing track space on their ships." It was sad, but she studied Adams' _Normandy _schematics with half a mind on calculating the best routes for a morning jog. The stairs between the CIC and the mess were promising.

He chuckled his agreement. "I read your profile- the unclassified portions of it, anyway. It didn't look like you spend much time planetside."

"I could say the same thing about you. Looked like you've been a little bit of everywhere." She drew her feet together and leaned forward into a butterfly position. "Seems to be working for you, though. That defense initiative on Keargef couldn't have been easy."

"It helps to work with good people. The CO on that run really knew his stuff," he replied, modestly. "I hope I've done some good work, but none of it's anything like, say, Akuze."

She blew out a breath. "Akuze was dumb luck."

"I doubt that. Maybe a little luck, sure, but not entirely." A grin, quick and bemused. "Anyway, I wouldn't bring it up to the marines. I thought Jenkins was going to shit himself when he realized you were the same Shepard. It's a morale booster for them, serving under you. At least, when you're not reaming them over incidental mistakes."

"Critiquing my command, lieutenant?" She raised an eyebrow, but her tone was light, unoffended. He'd said it almost more as a joke than anything else.

"Wouldn't dream of it, ma'am," he deadpanned back.

Shepard wiped a stray lock of hair out of her eyes, and leaned forward to grip her ankles. "Joker already dropped some hints about that. Every command is a little different."

"You recovered well." Alenko shrugged. "And let's face it, getting spaced by your own suit kind of deserves a kick in the pants."

"You've been working with them a long time?" Her curiosity was obvious. It was a strange feeling, being dropped into the middle of an established crew, but Anderson made it clear that if she wanted to be involved in serious command, she better get used to it. Nobody climbing the ladder stayed in one posting for long.

"We started training together six months ago, and only found out it was for the _Normandy _run four months back. I'm still not sure why they have us running so many ground maneuvers, but I guess they'll tell us when we need to know."

There was a question on the end of that statement, but Shepard didn't have any better idea than the lieutenant. Not that she'd tell him if she did. "Your guess is as good as mine."

The wry expression she got in return confirmed his understanding. "As you say, commander."

She twisted her back, turning away from him to stretch it fully. "Speaking of service records, I'm curious. Most soldiers who've been through college enlisted to pay for it, but you didn't sign up until after you were already graduated and saddled with loans."

"I had a private scholarship, actually. No loans. Thank god on this pay, right?" He copied her movement. "I guess I just thought through my enlistment more than most people."

"Private scholarship, electronic engineering major… you must be about as bright as Adams." She glanced at him over her shoulder. "I'm surprised the Alliance engineering corps was willing to let you go."

"I didn't give them much choice." Alenko shook his head. "Look, I know what you're asking, everyone does. I love tech, intellectually, but it just wasn't satisfying. I wanted to be somewhere the Alliance was making a real difference. And anyway, the scholarship didn't have anything to do with being smart… I don't particularly want to talk about it."

She regarded him for a moment, and shrugged. "Suit yourself, lieutenant."

"I better get going." He stood. "Watch out on the south end of the base- nothing but gravel down there, and it's going to be hard to see in this light."

"Thanks for the tip."

"Commander." He nodded, and headed back inside.

_The hell was that? _It seemed like they were having an easy enough conversation, and then he completely shut down over an innocuous question.

Shepard got to her feet, setting off at a jog. No skin off her nose- she had enough to worry about.

/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\

Shepard got her chance to demonstrate a little camaraderie the following day, in the armory. Target practice, like exercise, was something she had to pencil in on Mars. She favored an assault rifle, for its rapid fire capabilities, and the fact that her skill allowed her to easily switch between precision shots for single targets and spray for multiples. It was true that the rate of fire required a delicate approach to the heat sink, but she was so accustomed to the problem that accommodating it was second nature.

Alenko wasn't wrong about the crew. A number of them, particularly the least senior and youngest members, were definitely suffering from a spate of hero worship. It was a notoriety she could live without, being remembered as a heroine for the least successful mission of her career and one of the worst personal experiences of her life. And she happened to arrive at the range just as the young marines were beginning their own practice. Some of them couldn't resist trying to show off, before she even had a chance to select a weapon.

Some of them, in fact, got far too big for their britches. One young woman, in an attempt to demonstrate her knowledge of firearms, stated loudly, "I don't spend any time on target practice with a rifle. Rifles are best for containment situations."

Their instructing officer opened his mouth to respond, but Shepard cut in first, hiding her amusement. "Why do you say that?"

"Because they aim poorly, ma'am." She drew herself to attention, clearly convinced of her answer. "I'd rather have more time for weapons that place an emphasis on skill."

"Aren't you arguing that an assault rifle, in fact, would take _more _skill to use properly?"

The girl rolled her eyes. "C'mon, commander, everyone knows a pistol is more accurate. It'd never compare in a straight-up contest."

Shepard knew she was right, by the book, but seized on the opportunity with a swagger and a cocky smile. She removed a gun from the rack and checked the action. "Corporal, I am a fucking surgeon with this assault rifle." She paused. "You want to put your dignity where your mouth is?"

"What do you mean?" The girl seemed less certain of herself now. Her eyes strayed to the range.

"Straight up, best of five targets. I'll put my rifle up against whatever you care to fire. First mess after the _Normandy's _airborne, loser's a little teacup. What do you say?"

The corporal hesitated, but it was too late. Her friends were already cheering. She did the only thing she could- sighted her pistol down the range, and grinned. "You're on."

Half the crew went up against her that day, as word of the contest spread, before they wised up. Her first meal on the _Normandy _would be serenaded by quite the chorus. Even some of the more seasoned crew showed up just to watch. Chakwas and Pressly started placing bets to each other, not on who would win, but on how badly each enlistee would lose.

Alenko leaned against the far wall, arms folded, shaking his head as she sank shot after precise shot. He couldn't believe what he was seeing. His admiration must have been obvious, because Joker caught him staring, nudged him in the ribs, and asked, with smarmy mockery, "See something you like, LT?"

"She's REALLY good."

"She's N7. I don't think they give those out for good behavior."

Eventually, the entertainment value began to wane, and the audience drifted off to resume their duties, though from the sound of it the servicemen were going to repeat the story until the whole base knew. Shepard was smiling, though, as she began to reset the range. She'd forgotten how much fun it could be to let loose every once in awhile. And it felt nice to use her talents for something completely innocent, for once, to just enjoy being good at it without having to weigh the consequences or the body count.

"Pretty impressive performance, commander," Joker said. "Those kids never saw it coming."

"There's no real losing in that kind of competition." Shepard shrugged. "I'm a superior officer, at the pinnacle of my career track- I'm supposed to win. But being able to come close gives them some status points worth fighting for."

"I don't know. They were pretty earnest," Alenko observed. "They should have guessed you'd never make a bet like that if you weren't sure of winning."

"Chance is a bitch. Even I get screwed sometimes." She leveled them with a taunting grin. "I notice neither of you stepped up to the line."

Joker rolled his eyes. "Like I remember how to fire one of those things. If I find myself in the middle of a fire fight, it's already FUBAR'd beyond what anyone can fix. The only gun I need is the one mounted under the _Normandy_."

"Fair enough." She eyed Alenko. "What's your excuse?"

"No excuse. Just didn't want to steal any fun from the servicemen."

"Sure," Joker said, elbowing Shepard. "I bet you just didn't want to screw up in front of the XO."

Shepard winked at him slyly. "It's alright. The lieutenant probably just doesn't like competition."

Alenko snorted at her, but before she could take the trash talk up a notch, seized a pistol, sighted, and put five shots clean through the forehead of the still-active target.

They regarded the work. Joker muttered, "Show-off."

Shepard laughed. "Alright- you, I might need to use a pistol to beat. Or at least a better rifle than this."

He hit the reset for the target, smiling a little to himself, but kept any response to himself.

Shepard shook her head, bemused. "I think that's enough absurdity for one day. I'll see you both at tonight's debrief."

After she sauntered out of the room, Joker peered at Alenko. "Are you _blushing_, LT?"

"You need your eyes checked, Joker."

/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\

It was nearing ten o'clock in the evening when Shepard made her way to Anderson's office, stretching and yawning. "You wanted to see me, sir?"

"Shepard. Good." He pointed at a chair in front of his desk. "You seem to be settling into your new role."

"Trying, sir." She fell into the chair, posture relaxed, and stifled another yawn.

"Higher command not coming as easy as you thought?" Anderson asked, with a hint of dry amusement.

She snorted, acknowledgement and concession both. He chuckled. "I heard about your little show today. I'd say your well on your way to winning hearts and minds."

"But…?" She'd known him far too long to not hear the hesitation at the end of the statement.

He pierced her with a look. "It's good to be well-liked by your men. They'll follow your commands more readily, with less hesitation, less… interpretation. But there's a fine line. Cross it, and you're no longer their commander, but their peer, and they'll never listen to you again. You need to keep yourself above the business of your crew."

Shepard could see the wisdom of it, but it didn't sit entirely right with her. She wanted to be seen as somebody her crew could rely upon. She couldn't do that if they weren't comfortable being themselves around her. "I hear what you're saying, sir. I'd gotten some feedback indicating I needed to loosen up a bit. It was just a small course correction."

"Fine. Just don't dwell on it, or overthink it." He shuffled through a folder on the desk. "Speaking of which, it's natural that you'd get along more easily with the younger officers, but you shouldn't neglect the opportunity to form good working relationships with the rest, as well. Pressly's third in command of this ship. If something happens to you or me he inherits your job. I know he can come off as stuck-up, but you need to be able to work with him. Fluidly. As XO, you're also in charge of a lot of the day-to-day, so Adams needs to be assured that if he comes to you with a problem with the ship, you'll both understand it and address it promptly. Otherwise chain of command breaks down and we have anarchy on our hands."

"Yes, sir. I'll make more of an effort to seek out the other officers."

"Excellent." He relaxed, and looked up at her with more of a smile. "All in all, you're doing extremely well, better than I expected. It's a whole different world. Just keep it up. And get some sleep."

She smiled back, and stood. "That's an order I can get behind. Goodnight, sir."

"Goodnight, Shepard."


	3. Chapter 3

The night was clear and cold. Commander Shepard took a deep lungful of the crisp air as she stepped outside the base. It was the wrong season for dust storms, and it was easy to forget the thin barrier far overhead separating earth and sky, making Hellas Basin habitable. For all the dreaming of an earlier age, it turned out that it was easier to find warm, oxygen-laden planets in distant systems than transform lifeless worlds closer to home.

She shivered a bit despite the light leather jacket over her uniform. Three weeks of training was longer than most of her missions, almost relaxing- if she could stop fixating on why a shakedown run of new hardware should possibly require so much practice. Anderson seemed determined that the crew's performance be flawless. Maybe it was just showing off. The sleek and nimble ship they'd be putting through her paces was something else, after all. They were slated to board the _Normandy _tomorrow, complete the final check-out, and depart Sol the day after.

Personnel Lot B wasn't far. Shepard dug through her pocket for her keys.

"Little late to be going somewhere."

She glanced over her shoulder, tensing reflexively, but it was only Lieutenant Alenko. Shepard merely shrugged. "Can't sleep. Never can before a mission. Thought I'd go for a drive, clear my head."

"See, I'd have thought you'd be able to sleep through the Skyllian Blitz." His tone was teasing.

Shepard chuckled. "Through it, sure, but not before." She paused. "We missed you in the mess."

Being on the same training schedule put them on the same dinner schedule as well. "Yeah, I had a headache. Decided to lie down for awhile instead. The cold and quiet feels good."

"It's just as well. Meatloaf night." She made a face.

"I think you mean 'let's put all the kitchen scraps from the past week into ground beef and bake it' night."

"Hah." She stuck her hands in her pockets and studied the stars for a long moment, debating, and blew out a breath. "Well, since you're already out here, want to come? I was just going to head out over some of the old floodplains. You can get up to a respectable speed out there."

"Sure, why not?" He shrugged. "It's not like I have anything better to do."

They walked over to the lot. Alenko let out a low whistle as she sprung the lock and swung the door up. "This is your ride?"

"Yep." Shepard ran her hand over the top affectionately. "2160 Firestarter, one of the last produced before inertial dampeners started getting shoved into every vehicle in the galaxy. She'll still let you feel the ride, and she's got the horsepower and turbo to make it worthwhile."

"Anderson must like you more than he lets on. It's a hell of a courtesy car."

"Nope," she corrected. "She's all mine. My dad keeps her for me when I'm off-planet, which is sadly most of the time."

His surprise showed. "How'd you ever afford this on a marine's pay?"

"Fiscal discipline and black magic." She smiled fiercely. "You getting in, or what?"

Alenko slid into the passenger's seat, and took a cue from her to secure his seatbelt. These days most of the cars on the market didn't even need them. She matched up her key fob to the indentation on the dash and thumb printed the appropriate area. The Firestarter rewarded her with a warm purr of its engine, and it lifted into the air. She'd never tell her dad for fear of encouraging more experiments, but the car was running better than ever.

The car lifted out of the space and shortly thereafter swung off the highway and let loose on the basin plain.

She wasn't kidding when she talked about feeling the ride. The rocks in the foreground blurred against the crater rim horizon as she approached the Firestarter's maximum speed. It was as close to flying as anyone ever got on land. The holographic display took all her attention, as she whipped the car around boulders and over dip of an ancient rivulet, while Alenko clung to his seat and tried to roll with the car's motions.

"You're crazy!" he shouted over the engine din and screaming air.

She just laughed. "You saw the car. What were you expecting?"

He shook his head, but gradually relaxed as it became clear Shepard had no intention of steering them to an untimely end. By the time they drew near the wall and she started to slow, he was taking the hellish ride in stride. Mudflats stretched out for miles all around them. Millions of years past, in this spot, huge geysers of seasonal permafrost melt had ripped through the crater's rim, pouring billions of gallons of muddy water onto the plain. Now, it was more arid than the worst desert Earth had to offer. Shepard wondered, again, what had attracted the Protheans to this dismal rock, which was dry and dead even fifty thousand years past when they walked its dusty land.

"You know, I've visited the base a few times before the _Normandy_, but I don't think I've ever made it out here to the plains," Alenko remarked as she gently set down.

"Not many do." Shepard shrugged. "Kind of why I like it. It's quiet, undisturbed. A person can get some real thinking done."

She killed the engine and they walked out, meandering towards the wall until they found a large flat boulder. They sat there in silence for awhile, at turns admiring the stars and the landscape, light breeze tugging at their clothes and hair.

"You find yourself in need of a nice deep think every once in awhile?" Alenko asked.

"Don't you?" She brushed back a few locks of red hair the wind had pulled loose of her bun, away from her eyes and mouth. "It's what distinguishes us from rocks. From each other too, I suppose."

"I guess someone in your line of work would have a lot to think about."

"Lieutenant, you have no idea." She found it was easy to talk to him. Comfortable. They held enough in common to not grate against each other, and enough differences to keep the effort worthwhile. "I've been with special ops for almost ten years now. I could tell you a lot of stories."

"The way you drive, I'm surprised you didn't sign up for flight school. If you have the chops for N7 you could've written your own ticket anywhere."

"I love to drive," she confessed. "I love the speed. I love how demanding it is, how it takes up your entire concentration, the threshold of skill required and the spice of danger hanging on every turn. But flying… even combat flying, I don't know. I wanted to be on the ground, learn how to shoot, fight for real people and not just execute strategic plays for military assets."

"You like getting your hands dirty."

"Exactly."

"I guess I can understand that." It was his turn to pause. "It took me longer to come around to that point of view, but the Alliance has good intentions. I like to think we make some kind of positive difference."

"And it has to be one of the few places you can really use your skills," she pointed out.

Alenko knew immediately she wasn't talking about his aim. "I don't like relying on the biotics."

Something in his tone warned her off the subject, though she filed it away as a potential problem for later. It struck her strange that someone with that kind of talent wouldn't want to use it as effectively as possible. Her reply, however, was mild. "You'd know better than me about that stuff. I just know how to shoot a gun."

"You're not entirely wrong, though," he admitted after a moment, then shook his head. "Biotics may be unrestricted, but we sure don't go undocumented. Might as well get a paycheck for it."

"Someday you'll have to tell me about that."

"Someday, sure."

Polite way of saying fuck off. Shepard could take a hint. She turned her attention back to the sky.

"So, you're from Mars, then?" he asked, switching topics.

Shepard shrugged. "I'm not really from anywhere. My dad moved here when I was in high school and I moved with him. We lived a little bit of everywhere before that."

"That must've been hard. Leaving just as soon as you got settled."

"Sometimes it was." She shook her head. "But I always kind of liked it, you know? Some people spend their whole life trying to get off Earth and I'd seen half the galaxy before I was ten."

Alenko leaned back on his palms. "That's sort of why I joined up. I wanted to see what was out there."

She nodded. "Speaking of which- think we're all set for tomorrow?"

Another shrug. "You tell me, commander. But yeah, I think so. Everyone knows what to do. And it's a simple hardware shakedown. What could go wrong?"

/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\

The ship looked bigger in person than any sim or diagram made it appear.

Shepard hiked her duffle bag a bit higher on her shoulder. It was so new she could almost see her reflection in the paint. Never broken atmo. Never seen a fight, and buried in its walls were the heat sinks and plumbing that would do their damnedest to keep it that way. And in its belly, an eezo core to rival any in the galaxy.

The _Normandy._ Anderson's ship, but in no small way, her ship, too.

She tugged a bit at the collar of her starched dress blues- captain's direct orders, for the christening later- tore her eyes from the vessel, and made her way up the ramp and through the hatch. Joker was already ensconced at the controls, muttering to himself with cheerful sarcasm as he ran down his pre-flight checklist. They exchanged a nod and a wave before Shepard headed for the stairs. It was a simple matter to find her footlocker and toss her gear inside. A frigate wasn't a large ship. The captain had his own private quarters, but everyone else got a hot bunk. At least these were the new models, entirely self-contained and self-cleaning. There was nothing like laying down in someone else's clammy sweat to make you regret enlisting.

Anderson himself was standing in place of pride at the galaxy map in the CIC. It was surprising how quickly everyone adapted to this uniquely turian aspect of the ship's design. Grudgingly, a part of her had to admit it might just make more sense than having the skipper standing on the bridge. Information was far more valuable to the CO than the ability to look out the window.

He set aside his datapad. "Ah, Commander, there you are."

Shepard folded her arms behind her back. "Sir. All systems are reporting in. Everything appears to be on schedule."

"Indeed." His smile held a touch of foreboding, as if he didn't trust the smoothness of their impending departure. "Tell Adams to climb out and kick the tires, would you?"

She laughed at the archaic joke. "I don't think that will be necessary, sir."

"You're probably-" Anderson was cut off by the com.

"Captain, there's a message from Guardhouse Alpha. They say your guest has arrived."

Joker sounded as confused as she felt, but Anderson merely nodded. "Tell them I'll be right over to see to the authorization."

As he made to leave, Shepard moved slightly to her left, blocking his path. "Sir, what guest? Someone coming to see us off?"

"Something like that. You'll find out soon enough." He brushed past her.

Shepard strode to the bridge and craned her neck out the window. Her patience was soon rewarded as Anderson returned quickly in a transport, with an armed and armored turian riding shotgun. "The hell is this?"

"Huh?" Joker followed her gaze. "Ok, is this or is this not a classified Alliance vessel?"

"Well, they did help with the project." She dipped down, trying to keep them in view as they parked, not liking it any more than their pilot. "Maybe they're protecting their investment."

"Still our ship," Joker said stubbornly. "We don't need some random alien watching over our shoulders and checking our work."

"Ain't worth the pay some days, is it."

"You said it, ma'am."

Shepard got herself the few feet to the hatch just as Anderson and the turian came aboard, and held herself at attention. There was a glimmer of amusement in his eye, but he kept his tone crisp as he gestured towards her. "My executive officer, Commander Shepard."

The turian inclined his white-streaked head as Anderson continued, "Shepard, this is Nihlus Kryik, with Citadel Special Tactics and Reconnaissance."

"A spectre?" Her surprise was evident. That was the last explanation she expected. She peered at the turian with new scrutiny. His polite smile, if you wanted to call it that on a mouth with no lips, widened a touch.

"I've been assigned to this ship as an observer," Nihlus rumbled pleasantly, in that odd turian voice that sounded halfway between a hum and a growl. He was using English, though he had to know Shepard had a translator package in her omnitool, and she could understand the most common turian dialects without it besides. A small courtesy. "Do not worry, Commander. I have no plans to get in the way of your crew or the _Normandy's _operations. The Council is most interested in seeing your clever stealth system in operation."

She recovered herself and nodded. "Welcome aboard."

"See that our guest is made to feel at home," Anderson interjected, pleasantly, but there was no doubt it was an order.

"Aye aye, sir. If you'll follow me, please." A glance over her shoulder as she led the spectre towards the stairs showed Joker staring open-mouthed. She shrugged, still at a loss, and saw to getting Nihlus settled on the crew deck.

The rest of the day passed in a blur of activity. Around midmorning the military journalist showed up to document the event for the archives, whenever the ship got declassified, and they all stood around smiling for his camera while Anderson broke a bottle of champagne against the hull. For years, he shepherded this project through no fewer than three separate, massive bureaucracies to bring the idea to fruition, and nobody could think of anyone more appropriate. The Alliance was proud of this ship, and nothing in this mission was without ceremony, up to and including the destination for the stealth check-out, one of the first and most successful human colonies.

Then it was back aboard ship, everyone at their posts, making certain all gear was stowed and there were no last-minute questions or concerns. That was Shepard's XO duty in a nutshell. It fell to her to keep the ship running smoothly, whether that meant assigning a duty roster, keeping track of their logistics, or smoothing friction in the crew. Of course, Anderson had his own reasons for selecting her that had little to do with an ability to make sure the tank was full. Spec ops was an important branch of the Systems Alliance, but not so important or large that they rated their own ships. Command preferred to integrate their special forces with other personnel for large-scale undertakings. In a sense, Anderson was trying to integrate the two more closely than was customary, to prove the value. The _Normandy _was nothing if not an experiment.

There was nothing quite like the launch of a ship, even a frigate-class, which launched horizontally like a shuttle. The shuddering of the engines was deep resonance traveling through the bones of the ship, up through the boots and into the body until it felt like it was the whole rest of the world that shook. The first five seconds passed so slowly, this enormous ship straining and pushing and going nowhere. Then, in the pit of her stomach, she felt the momentum dampers came online, thief and salvation both, making a pocket of stillness in the belly of the beast. The ship broke free. And the land _blurred_.

There was no describing how fast it went by. Even Shepard, who considered herself something of a connoisseur of speed, was left without words. Mars fell away, followed by a gradient atmosphere of pinking thinning to black, and at last, passing around the back, there was nothing but the curve of the planet and the pinpricks of stars, and even though you knew the ship's velocity was extraordinary, instinct reported the travel had smoothed, slowed, hit a natural stride. This was orbit.

Normally, this stage would be passed over. But it was a new ship, and this was the first test of its environmental and engine systems in the real vacuum of space. Everyone preferred a few trials be run while they were still in range of every conceivable help. The crew settled in for phase one of the shakedown which was slated to take six hours. That would take them into third shift. Anderson wasn't keen on sleeping while the _Normandy _made her maiden voyage through the relays, so the ship would rendezvous with Charon overnight, and pass through first thing in the morning.

Shepard went about her duties, but everywhere she turned, Nihlus was at her back. He asked the occasional question, but mostly he just watched, arms folded behind his back, eyes black and sharp. It was getting on her nerves, though she was damned if she would let him notice. Turian spectre, indeed. She had nothing against turians, but a lot against any outsider who presumed to cast judgment on an unfamiliar ship or crew.

Nihlus' scrutiny made the exemplary performance of ship and crew even more pleasing. For all their mistakes in the simulators, they executed the live run with next to no errors. Everyone was sharp and on top of their tasks. Joker was in heaven- apparently the ship exceeded even his astronomical expectations. Even Anderson was smiling, albeit in a reserved way.

It was with excitement that the lead team switched out bunks with the night crew. Everyone was looking forward to reaching Eden Prime.


	4. Chapter 4

It took fewer than two days for Nihlus to get under Joker's skin.

"Drift of 1500. That's good." The turian's rumble of a voice was approving. "Your captain will be pleased."

Nihlus nodded at Shepard as he took his leave of the bridge, and the moment his back was turned Joker was pulling faces. She folded her arms and gave him a level look. "What's the problem?"

"1500 drift isn't good, it's amazing! It's like hitting a rhino between the eyes from orbit." He made a disgusted sound at the back of his throat. "And I don't like the way he's been looking over all our shoulders non-stop, either. Something's up."

Alenko sat in the right-hand couch, with a half-dozen displays circling his hands. His concentration didn't waver from his work. "He gave you a compliment, so he has some nefarious agenda?"

"It wasn't a compliment," Joker protested. "It just doesn't feel right. Why is he here? This mission is boring. We're inside Alliance space, the ship passed all the ground tests with flying colors, and it's just a shakedown for the rest of the hardware. The absolute most exciting thing that could happen is we lose power or something and drift out here all of half a day before the Alliance scrambles a rescue."

"It's not just an Alliance ship, Joker," the lieutenant replied with the tired overtones of someone who had already made this point twenty times over.

Joker swiveled in his chair. "What do you think, Commander? There's more to this mission, right?"

"You know better than to ask questions like that," she answered, automatically, but with less severity than usual. Joker was well aware that need-to-know was real, with real reasons and consequences. But deep down she agreed with her pilot's assessment and it frustrated her to no end. She was the X.O. It was well within her purview to be informed of all ship operations, classified or not, and furthermore she was an N7 operative and accustomed to dealing in secrecy. What could Anderson possibly have on the boil that was so sensitive she couldn't be trusted?

To her chagrin, Joker winked and touched his nose. "Aye aye, ma'am. As you say."

"You watch too many spy vids on the extranet," Alenko muttered, not quite quietly enough to escape Joker's hearing.

He made another face. "What are you even doing up here, L.T.? You can't fly a ship."

"Adams thinks the drive response might be a bit sluggish, but it was hard to test without putting the ship through a real maneuver. But for that same reason, he needed all his engineers on deck." He shrugged. "He needed someone with the electronic equivalent of the ability to hold a hammer up here to run the diagnostic. I can do that."

"This ship practically dances through a relay. No way is the command link slow."

"It is." Alenko swiped at the H.I., sending a data screen flying onto Joker's display. "Check it out for yourself."

Joker scrutinized the data. "I'll be damned."

"Is it going to affect operations?" Shepard peered over his shoulder. It was a futile gesture. She could no more interpret a series of raw cable readings than sing an aria.

"No, Commander. She'll need some recalibration, that's it. Adams might even be able to do it live if we're lucky."

"Carry on, then."

"Aye aye, ma'am."

Shepard moved back into the CIC. It was an old habit, but she never got tired of seeing a relay up close. That moment when the blue tendril of the giant mass effect field vortex at the heart of the relay spun out and engulfed the ship, and performed the vanishing cabinet trick on an entire frigate in the space of a quantum blink, was about as close to magic as she figured she was ever likely to get. It worked- but it was Prothean. There were any number of details no human or alien truly understood about the relays even after thousands of years of study.

Immediately, she overheard Navigator Pressly arguing over his comm to Adams, insisting there was more to this mission than meets the eye. Her mood soured another notch as she strode over.

"Commander," Pressly greeted her, saluting. He looked paler than on Mars, the orange lights designed for dark-sensitive vision washing all the color out of him.

Shepard didn't prevaricate. "Navigator, what is our mission?"

"To fully validate the new stealth system, ma'am," he answered promptly.

"And?" She raised an eyebrow.

Pressly's brow furrowed. "That sums it up, I think."

"Exactly." She folded her arms. "We do not spread rumor and speculation about our mission. Am I clear?"

"Yes, ma'am." He put his heels together and saluted again, a touch stiffly at the chastisement. "That turian just has me jumpy, ma'am, no disrespect. I've heard about these spectres."

"What have you heard?" she asked, with genuine curiosity. Shepard's knowledge of their operation ended at the bird's eye view of their role as the Council's left hand.

"Enough to know that spectres don't bother with this kind of mission, no matter who built the damn ship. They could have sent anyone to do a simple inspection." He shook his head. "And from the way he's scrutinizing us, hardly saying a word, it's clear he's expecting something to happen."

"I hear that. He's been sticking to my ass like a burr since he came aboard." It was beyond tedious. Every checklist, every order, he wanted to double-check personally, and what was worse, Anderson let him.

As if reading her thoughts, Pressly continued, "And then there's the captain. If there's a more decorated special forces officer in the fleet, I'd be hard-pressed to name him. Why is he overseeing this mission personally?"

Shepard rubbed the bridge of her nose. "It's his ship, navigator. It's hard to imagine he wouldn't want to take charge of her maiden voyage."

Pressly went on as if he hadn't heard her, ticking off his third point on his fingers. "And why do we have a full crew? A skeleton crew would be cheaper. Special forces, special personnel, and a damned turian. No offense, ma'am, but this doesn't smell right."

"We need a full crew in case-" She sighed, and gave up. "You know what? It doesn't matter. Do your job and stop spreading this kind of shit around. Even if you're right, it'll only make people nervous."

"As you say, ma'am." He turned back to his console.

She folded her arms and changed the subject. "What's your problem with turians anyway?"

"My family fought in the First Contact War. We lost some friends. I can't say I trust them, ma'am."

"My parents lived through Shanxi, too. But that was a long time ago." In truth, Shepard could barely remember the war, if you wanted to call a three-month misunderstanding a war. She was only a toddler when it happened. Most of the old guard, however, soldiers who could recall Relay 314 with great clarity, felt like Pressly, so she tried not to sound too dismissive.

"Yes it was, but they're still the same damned-" Pressly caught her look and swallowed the end of his statement. "Was there anything else, ma'am?"

"As you were." Shepard found her own terminal and began looking over the crew reports from the transit. So far, it was a textbook run. All the training paid off.

Shepard was only at it a few minutes before Joker's voice crackled over the speakers. "Commander, the captain wants to see you in the comm room."

She glanced at the ceiling instinctively, even though Joker would hear her response no matter where she directed her voice. "Tell him I'm on my way."

Shepard rounded the corner and nearly collided with Dr. Chakwas and Corporal Jenkins.

"I just can't wait for the _real _mission to start," Jenkins was saying. Indeed, he was bouncing on the balls of his feet like a two-year-old, and there was a wild look, two parts excited to one part nervous, about him.

_For the love of god, can't anyone on this ship focus on our __**stated **__mission? _But Shepard was learning to keep a reign on her temper fast. "You better settle down before you strain something, corporal."

"Sorry ma'am." For a split second he seemed chagrined, but it passed quickly. "I can't believe there's a real spectre on board!"

"Spectres are trouble," the doctor observed. There was that little half-smile playing about her mouth Shepard was coming to regard as her base expression, as if she'd seen so much of life the only logical response left was to be vaguely amused. "They have no official authority, of course, only a general mandate to protect galactic interests. And they keep to themselves. It's rare to see one working with an entire ship like this."

"Protect the galaxy _at any cost_," Jenkins emphasized. "Spectres operate above the law. The only person who can take out a spectre is another spectre."

Chakwas chuckled. "I believe the corporal is mistaking romanticized anecdotes for reality."

"So why aren't there any human spectres? If it's a council-wide organization?" Shepard's brow furrowed.

The doctor shrugged. "They're drawn primarily from the council races. Turians of course have a strong military tradition, but also asari, and salarians are widely considered the galactic masters of covert operations. The Alliance has tried for years to forward a human candidate for consideration, but so far, no luck."

"Hey." Jenkins' eyes lit up suddenly as a thought struck him. "I bet you'd make a pretty good spectre, commander. I mean, you proved you can hold your own against any of those guys back on Akuze! I hope I get that kind of chance someday."

Her eyes narrowed. "Fifty marines died there, Jenkins. Show some damn respect. The Alliance Navy isn't about seeking personal glory. It's about doing the best damn job you can, no matter what, and then getting up the next day and doing it again. Every last one of those men and women understood that."

"I'm- I'm sorry, ma'am. I didn't mean anything by it."

The commander watched him for a long moment before she let her expression soften. "Just remember your training, keep sharp, and follow my orders, and you'll be fine. Whatever happens."

"Yes, ma'am!" He saluted.

She nodded at them both. "The captain's waiting for me."

The comm room was state of the art, as befit a ship intended to specialize in reconnaissance. Aside from the obvious- top-notch displays and audio, multiple channels and terminals- there were the hidden technologies, encryptions so bleeding-edge half the protocol book still had editorial notes from the coders. The communications system on the Normandy could get a hook in a comm buoy half a system away, and deliver that signal straight back to Earth if necessary, on a beam so tight she'd bet the whole ship against its interception.

When Shepard walked in, Nihlus was using all that brilliant tech to screen a commercial tourist vid of Eden Prime.

"Planning a holiday?" Shepard asked dryly.

"Ah, Commander." The spectre turned and clasped his hands- claws?- behind his back. He was wearing his hard suit, as he had the entire trip, despite the discomfort. "I was hoping to speak with you privately."

"Regarding?" She folded her arms and leaned back against the terminal rail.

"This world of yours, Eden Prime." He gestured at the vid. "Lovely, isn't it?"

"Not my world. I've never been there." She tilted her head. "What's this about?"

"Like every race, humanity is of limited resources. Yet you pour so many of yours into this jewel of a garden world, this colony, right on the border of Council space, with pirates, slavers, mercenaries, and worse just waiting to spill over from the Terminus the moment you let down your guard." His mandibles flared.

Shepard was no expert in turian body language, but she sensed displeasure. "What do you care? It's an Alliance world."

"Your aptly-named Alliance is still young. Humanity is young. You're still used to thinking in terms of disparate nations, not as one people, of intertwined concerns." Nihlus paced before the holo stage. "This is why you don't have a good foothold on the galactic stage. And you have no idea of the true dangers the galaxy can present. None."

The corner of her mouth quirked. "Are you trying to scare me, spectre?"

"Enough." Shepard drew herself to attention automatically as Anderson entered the room. "I think it's time we told the commander what's really going on."

"Indeed." Nihlus turned to her. "This is not a simple shakedown run, commander."

"Thanks. I'd already figured that one out, along with half the ship." She glanced at Anderson. "I assume there is a good reason I wasn't informed earlier. Sir."

"Don't get cute with me, Shepard. This came straight from the top. Strictly need-to-know. We couldn't chance an information leak." He paused. "Scientists on Eden Prime have unearthed a Prothean artifact. Our job is to go in, quick and quiet, and retrieve it for further study on the Citadel."

She took a moment to absorb that. There wasn't a human alive who didn't appreciate the magnitude of how the Prothean archives on Mars changed the course of their race. Other than the relays, they'd found no other technological remnants in forty years. "I thought the Protheans disappeared fifty thousand years ago. What are the odds the thing still even works?"

"Right now, it appears to be intact." Anderson was quite serious. "Shepard, this is big. What if this time it's not just ship technology, but something even more dangerous, like a weapons cache? We can't risk it falling into the wrong hands."

Shepard considered Nihlus' concerns in a new light. If Eden Prime was an old Prothean colony, it was uncomfortably close to Terminus territory. Suddenly, she was worried too. "Sir, why are we bringing it to the Citadel? This is a human colony, a human ship. Is it really a good idea to make this information so public?"

"We need to spread a little goodwill among the other races, and the sanctions for concealing Prothean technology are among the harshest in the galaxy." His expression was severe. Then he admitted, "And we'll need their help to crack its secrets. They have more expertise with this kind of scientific work."

"This goes beyond human concerns, Shepard, regardless of the need for secrecy. That's why we want to extract it with a stealth ship." Nihlus tossed Anderson a significant look that left her puzzled.

Anderson cleared his throat. "But this so-called beacon isn't the only reason Nihlus is here. He's come to observe you."

"I guess that explains why I've been bumping into him every time I turn around." She fiddled with her thumbs behind her back. "Why?"

"We've been petitioning the Council for years now to inaugurate a human spectre. Nihlus has put your name forward. They've been watching you for some time."

"Nihlus put my name forward? Why would a turian care about a human presence in the spectres?" Her surprise was obvious. Shepard didn't have a knee-jerk reaction of distrust for turians like Pressly. She knew they were just people, like anyone else, good, bad, and indifferent, but the hierarchy wasn't exactly a friend of the Alliance, either. Just like the Alliance still remembered the affront to their sovereignty, the turians recalled the staggering reparations they were ordered to pay when the asari brokered peace, for what in their eyes was simply enforcing galactic law.

"I don't care about species representation." Nihlus was frank. "I do care about the defense of the galaxy. People who possess the skills required of a spectre are rare in any species, and I suspect you may be among them. There's too much work to ignore any candidate. I care if you can do the job."

"He will observe your next several missions and forward his recommendation to the Council." Anderson made it sound like a done deal.

Shepard's mind was racing. This was the last thing she'd expected, and she found herself floundering a bit. "I assume this is good for the Alliance, sir?"

"Very." Anderson watched her closely.

There were a dozen questions that immediately sprang to mind. Was it even possible to be both Alliance and a spectre? Wouldn't that be a conflict of interest? She signed up to defend humans, human space, against any and all threats, and moreover she liked being enlisted. At the same time, the offer was alluring, in the same way as ICT before she understood what that really meant. It was a chance to be recognized as one of the best of the best. Shepard was no more immune to that than the next soldier. And god knew she chaffed at the restrictions placed on her, sometimes.

In the end, it didn't matter. She'd ceded a portion of control of her life when she signed up, and a great deal more when she was promoted to N7. This was nothing new. She saluted smartly. "I'll do my best, sir."

"Good." He sounded pleased. "We should be making our final approach soo-"

"Captain." Joker's voice filled the room. "I just received a transmission from the surface. I think you need to see this."

"Put it up on the screen."

What filled the room next was nothing less than a vision of hell.

The farmland of Eden Prime was transformed into a field of corpses. Marines littered the ground. A shaky camera captured a few still fighting, firing shots at unseen enemies. At one point, a fellow marine pushed the cameraman down, in an apparent protective gesture, and continued firing. Smoke and strange light were everywhere. Shepard found herself glancing at Anderson, checking for surprise, and saw no trace of recognition on his face. This was a shock to him, too. Which meant it was outside the plan.

Further down the line, Nihlus' mandibles were flexing again. She definitely called it right as a sign of unease. He fingered the pistol hanging at his hip, thinking furiously. Shepard turned her attention back to the display.

"That's all of it, captain," Joker said. "Nothing but dead air on every channel now."

Anderson's eyes never left the vid. "Take it to 38.5 and hold."

Joker did as he asked, and then Shepard saw it, the object that was too fleeting to make out the first time through. It was gigantic, and black, perched like a wasp on long segmented legs over the colony. Pink lightening crackled around its carapace.

"The hell is that?" she breathed. It surely wasn't a ship of Terminus pirates or mercs.

"What's our ETA?" Anderson barked.

Joker answered immediately. "17 minutes out, sir. No other Alliance ships in range."

Nihlus turned towards them. "A small strike team could get in undetected. Maybe get a handle on the situation, maybe get the beacon out."

"Get your gear and tell Jenkins and Alenko to suit up." Anderson never looked at her. "Things just got a hell of a lot more complicated. You're going in."

Shepard stared at the frozen image a moment longer. "Roger that."


	5. Chapter 5

They were in the shuttle bay at ETA five minutes, hard suits fully checked out and weapons ready. The hard suit was at the core of modern marine equipment. Aside from the best armoring materials advancement could provide, arranged to protect vital areas while maintaining a wide degree of flexibility, it contained a portable mass effect field generator that would act as a weak shield against projectiles and biotic attacks. It wouldn't hold up for more than a few seconds in combat, but sometimes a few seconds were the difference between finding your cover and bleeding out in the dirt. Unfortunately, they also persuaded a lot of inexperienced marines to treat this temporal padding as an extension on their maneuverability. That was fine for someone like Shepard, who knew to the millisecond how long her shield would last and by instinct when it was about to go down, but for a rookie it only granted overconfidence.

They were also the only piece of gear an Alliance marine was likely to encounter that was custom-fit. Sure, they started with stock sizes, but the webbing was cut to measure and the plating adjusted to fit each soldier's particular frame. The shield didn't and couldn't extend much beyond the boundaries of the armor, so it was important that it fit correctly, aside from the benefits provided to agility and stamina, as proper-fitting gear that hung correctly off the body was less tiring to carry. Shepard was grateful; she was accustomed to letting out the hems of her uniforms, but she couldn't imagine living in a hard suit that fit that poorly as received.

Nihlus checked the last of his weaponry while Anderson explained the plan. "Nihlus will scout ahead and relay information back to your team, Shepard. Your mission is to assess the situation on the ground and extract the beacon."

"Survivors, sir?" Alenko asked from behind her right shoulder.

"Survivors are secondary to recovering this artifact. We can't allow it to fall into enemy hands."

Shepard saluted. "Understood, sir."

Joker dropped her squad away from the combat zone, so as not to draw unwanted attention. Back here it was hard to remember there was any fighting at all. The only sight for miles was rocky green pasture, dotted with large, jellyfish-like gas bag creatures. Even the gunfire was too distant to hear.

At least, until she turned around, and saw the devastation below the ridge where they stood, spreading out in waves towards the heart of the colony. The network of valleys looked like bloody scars running through the land. Smoke occulted much of the landscape, glowing faintly from the fires beneath as the fields burned, the whole agrarian economy of Eden Prime disappearing before her eyes beneath an ochre sky. A stiff breeze blew the ash up into her lungs, choking her.

"Ship perimeter secure." Alenko called, turning as she coughed out the smoke. His eyes went wide, and he breathed, almost to himself, "What happened here?"

Shepard gave herself a little shake to stop staring and deliberately turned her back on the scene. "We've got a hike ahead of us. Move out."

Jenkins was still looking blankly out over the destruction. She touched his shoulder briefly, grounding him, and he turned away from the vista with a look of determination. Shepard recalled belatedly that Eden Prime was Jenkins' home world, but perhaps it was for the best. Nobody would fight harder for it.

She pressed the com link buried in her ear. "Nihlus. We're in."

"Good." The line crackled with static. "I'll scout ahead and meet you at the dig site."

"Roger that. Shepard out."

Eden Prime for all its stature only had one colonial site. Various missions and corporations had scouted locations for additional settlements, but so far no money had come through. Instead, the primary settlement sprawled, after thirty years covering tens of thousands of acres, counting the farmland. That centralization made the colony only more vulnerable. Shepard still could not imagine who would have the audacity to wage an attack on this scale with no warning whatsoever. Her thoughts naturally ran to the batarians, but this had none of the hallmarks of their style of combat. The invading ship from the vid message, if that was what it was, was certainly not of the Hegemony.

They'd been walking for fifteen minutes when she heard the first shots and signaled a stop to their advance. Peering around an outcrop, she couldn't make out the enemy, but signaled they should proceed with caution. The three of them picked their way down into the valley from cover to cover, tensed, weapons drawn, and she could tell already that Jenkins was struggling a bit. His movements were sloppy, and his crouches left the top of his head exposed. Typical kid stuff. These guys came out of basic without ever having experienced real fighting, or real fear, and they just didn't watch themselves like they should.

Her attention was torn between scouting ahead with her eyes and constructing the ear-stinging lecture Jenkins badly needed once the immediate danger was past. Her nose twitched at another gust of smoke hit them. She knew she'd heard gunfire. But where the hell was the shooter?

Then a flash of metal caught her eye, and before she could do more than open her mouth, Jenkins shuffled out of cover and was halfway to his new location before he was pinned by a hailstorm of bullets from a flying drone. Shepard threw her gun over the top of the nearest boulder, braced it against the stone, peered down the sight, and pulled the trigger in one fluid motion. Over the years she'd learned to all but do surgery with her assault rifle, but she was still too slow. By the time the turret and its companion fell Jenkins was gone.

Alenko bent over the body and shut Jenkins' eyes, visibly shaken. Shepard took a deep breath, and blew it back out. Incidents like this were always unsettling. _Damn it. _

After a moment, she was able to speak more calmly. "There's nothing more we can do for him. We need to finish the mission."

The lieutenant continued to squat beside the corporal, his face invisible to her at this angle. She touched his shoulder lightly. "We have to get moving. We're sitting ducks here. I'm sorry."

"I-" He glanced again at the body, jaw clenched, then back at her. "Right. Yes, ma'am."

Shepard watched him a few seconds more, to be sure he'd hold together, but if anything he seemed more resolute. That was good. It was the only way grief, or regret, served any purpose on a battlefield. They picked up their gear and set off again towards the colony, leaving Jenkins at peace in the grass behind them.

After awhile, once their nerves stopped twanging like over-tuned guitar strings, Shepard asked, "What were those things? They didn't look much like Alliance recon drones."

"Call me crazy," Alenko said, "But I think they might've been geth."

"You are crazy. Nobody's seen geth in, what, three hundred years?"

"I took a seminar on quarian technology years ago. They looked an awful lot like the drones used during their war. It's hard to say for certain from the pieces."

"Where's there's geth drones, there'll be actual geth," she said grimly. "If you're right we'll find out soon enough. Could that insect ship thing be geth?"

"Don't know. I've never seen anything like that in my life."

At that point, Nihlus' voice crackled over the com. "I'm finding a lot of bodies here, Commander. Something hit the colony hard, right at the heart of it."

That quieted any chatter. Not long after, the distinctive rattle of assault rifle fire echoed from up ahead. They picked up the pace.

As they crested the ridge, they saw a marine running straight towards them, still too far to make out more than a uniform. Behind her, two lanky, almost graceful machine creatures with long fingers and narrow heads were loading a moaning human onto some kind of device. Shepard's eyes went round as they triggered it, sending the man up a fifteen-foot tall impaling spike. His tortured scream as he died was the stuff of horror movies- too unearthly and exaggerated to possibly be real.

Training took over in place of shock. Shepard dove for cover and brought her sights on the machines. Maybe Alenko was right, and they were geth- she sure didn't know of any other rogue AI wandering the galaxy. The unidentified marine stumbled as she ran.

Alenko gestured and the bodies smacked into a rock wall, where Shepard's gun turned them into shrapnel and grease. Two more drones, perhaps attracted by the noise, dropped in behind the fleeing woman and planted two shots squarely into her back in a burst of scattered blue light as her shield absorbed the impact. For a second Shepard thought they were about to lose another soldier, but the marine was quicker, throwing herself onto her back and returning fire. The drones were no match for the three of them.

Warily, Shepard kept her gun aimed ahead, expecting more trouble. "Go! We got you!"

The marine scrambled back to her feet under the covering fire and made for an outcrop. She slid down the stone with an unmistakable expression of relief, panting like she'd just run a marathon. Which, in all likelihood, she had.

The woman struggled to stand and managed to get off a weak salute as Shepard and Alenko approached, taking in their insignia. "Are you in charge, ma'am?"

Shepard looked her over. Her brown eyes were steady, but her hands shook around her gun. "I'm Commander Shepard, special forces. Who are you?"

"Gunnery Chief Ashley Williams of the 212, ma'am, and boy am I glad to see you, if you don't mind me saying." Williams glanced over her shoulder, as if expecting more geth at any time, and drummed her fingers against the barrel of the rifle. Her words came at a staccato pace.

"Are you injured?" Shepard kept her tone soft. Williams had clearly been through something nightmarish. Harsh demands would only rattle her, press her into doing something regretful.

"No ma'am. Not me."

Suddenly it snapped into place. "You're the one from the transmission. You shoved the cameraman to the ground."

"I didn't think anyone would pick that up. He didn't make it."

"Where's the rest of your unit?" Shepard didn't know why she was asking. She knew that look from the inside out_. Fucking Akuze._

Williams shook her head, ashen-faced. "It's just me now, ma'am."

"This isn't your fault. You did exactly what you were supposed to." As if that ever mattered. The girl looked like she was holding up well enough for some questions. It would hit her later, in a great wave that threatened to drown her, but for now, the chief might be of use. "I need you to tell me everything you can remember about the attack."

"Yes, ma'am." Williams straightened, holding her head a little higher. "We came in a few days ago to provide protection for the scientists. They found something huge. I heard one of them say it could be the greatest discovery in the last thirty years, since they found all that Prothean stuff on Mars."

"Where did the geth come from?"

"Fuck, is that what those machines are?" She paled beneath the bravado. "We were deployed to secure the site as soon as they figured out what they were dealing with. Some people said they saw some kind of ship. All I know is suddenly those things were swarming our camp. We did the best we could, but… All the scientists are probably dead, too."

She trailed off. Her eyes went out of focus and drifted somewhere over Shepard's left shoulder.

"Stay focused, marine." Shepard let a little sharpness into her voice, and Williams' face snapped back to hers. "What can you tell me about the beacon? The thing the scientists were digging up?"

"Right." She jerked a thumb back towards the destroyed geth. "It was really tall, and kind of… sweeping? Green. I don't know. It didn't seem to do much. They were keeping it at the dig site down the hill."

Shepard nodded. "Take us there."

"Yes, ma'am." Williams checked her gun and smiled with absolutely no humor. "Time for some payback."

She let that one go- whatever kept Williams on her feet, and hell, they were just machines. Whatever the chief wanted to do with them couldn't be wrong. "Move out."

The artificial crater of the archaeological dig was shrouded in ramps, mountings, cables, energy generators, and everything else a group of scientists might need to investigate an exceptionally valuable monolith. It was also swarming with geth. Shepard moved ahead herself this time. There was no need to have a repeat of Jenkins' demise. If they were spotted, she damn well wanted to be between their line of fire and the rest of her team, because she knew how to take it.

From what she could tell, though, Williams understood how to move- not a rookie, then. She didn't make a racket and there were no signs of hesitation or halting. And they'd passed several broken drones on the way. How the hell a woman with enough stamina and courage to survive that kind of assault was stuck as a gunnery chief defied speculation, to Shepard's way of thinking. Maybe there was something in her service record that couldn't be ignored.

They methodically gunned down the geth, working their way to the center of the dig, where they found… nothing. Williams stared in disbelief. "It was right here."

"Somebody moved it," Alenko glanced at her. "The geth? Or one of ours?"

_Nothing's ever simple, _Shepard thought, not without a touch of frustration. "Where would they have taken it?"

Almost on cue, the comm lit up again with Nihlus' grating turian voice. "The spaceport's up ahead. I'm going to check it out. Meet you there."

Their eyes met, each reflecting the same thought. Shepard cursed. "They're trying to get it off-world."

"We have to stop them." Alenko started searching for a way up out of the dig.

Williams was confused. "Why would the geth want a Prothean beacon?"

"We can ask those questions later. Right now, we make for the spaceport." Shepard jerked her chin at Williams. "Do you know the way?"

The chief nodded, and began walking.

Just as soon as they cleared the top of the dig site, they saw the sheds serving as temporary housing and field laboratories for the scientists. There weren't any bodies, which Shepard found strange. It was obvious a fight happened here. What were the geth doing with the corpses? Spiking them? What was the point?

She voiced the question, and Alenko shrugged. "Basic psychological warfare, right?"

"No." Williams hissed. "The geth aren't content with just killing us. They want us to suffer."

Shepard and the lieutenant exchanged a look. It was clear Williams was clinging to stability by the skin of her teeth, but they couldn't leave her by herself, things were too hot for an evac, and there was nothing they could say or do to make it easier.

The first shed was unlocked, and held nothing of interest. It didn't look abandoned in any haste. Books were still on shelves, terminals neatly locked down.

There was dark movement behind the tinted windows of the second shed. Alenko hacked through the lock, and they stepped in with guns drawn and sighted, only to find two very frightened people in lab coats.

"Oh, thank god, you're human," gushed the woman, with a relief that couldn't be forged. She was the older of the pair. The man squirmed beside her with wild eyes and little acknowledgement, twitching faintly.

Williams blinked. "You're Dr. Warren. The head of the science team."

"Yes." Warren nodded, then shuddered, elaborately. "When the attack came, we ran to the shed here and locked ourselves inside. It was… horrifying. Everyone was dying."

The man mumbled something, drawing an apprehensive glance from the doctor. She added lamely, "And this is my assistant, Manuel."

"The age of humans is ended in fire and darkness," Manuel intoned, suddenly meeting Shepard's eyes. She saw nothing of sanity in their depths. He mumbled again and looked away.

Her squad shifted behind her, unnerved, but she steeled herself. "Dr. Warren, what exactly did you find here?"

"The discovery of a lifetime. Operational prothean technology! I've spent my whole life studying the protheans. It was like a dream…" She trailed off, her gaze drifting to the window and the devastation that lay beyond.

Manuel stirred again, slamming his fist against the glass and making them all jump. "They are coming. The return draws nigh. Soon they will cover the galaxy again and none shall be spared!"

His voice was rising. Shepard narrowed her eyes.

After a pause, Williams continued with the questioning. "Did you see anyone move the beacon?"

"What? We moved it ourselves, this morning, down to the spaceport. We've done all we can in situ." Warren gasped. "You don't think that's what these creatures-"

"Could be." Shepard looked back at the open hatch, nervous. "Did you see a turian come by, not long ago?"

"There are no turians on Eden-" the doctor began to protest, but her assistant raised his gaze to Shepard's and spoke in a tone of awe and fear.

"I saw him," he stated, with the weight of dead certainty. "The prophet. He is their leader. He brought the machines. He will herald their return and grant them passage back to the light."

Her brow furrowed. "You saw a turian?"

"Couldn't be Nihlus," Alenko remarked, confused. "He was on the ship with us when the invasion began."

Manuel muttered something. Shepard stepped closer, cautiously, reaching out a gentle hand. "Please, I need to kn-"

At that moment, Manuel's eyes rolled back in his head and he opened his mouth, as if to scream. Shepard clocked him in the temple before she even realized what she was doing, acting on pure instinct. Manuel fell to the floor without so much as a sigh.

Warren sprang back, shocked. "Oh my god!"

Alenko rubbed his temple, evidently disappointed, but there was no mistaking the slight relaxation throughout the remainder of the group now that Manuel was silent. "That might have been a little extreme, Commander."

"He was going to attract the geth with his antics." Shepard was unapologetic, shaking out her hand. "He wasn't in his right mind."

"I gave him some medication. I suppose this will give it some time to kick in." Warren sighed, not entirely appeased, but as relieved as any of them. "Was there anything else, Commander?"

"No. Thank you for your information. You've been very helpful."

They began to find more bodies as they moved closer to the center of the colony, and the spaceport. There still weren't as many as Shepard would have expected from an assault of this magnitude, or from Nihlus' periodic reports. His prolonged silence began to worry her. Hostages crossed her mind along with several less pleasant possibilities, but it wasn't until they were within sight of the spaceport that she put it altogether.

"Hold up." She peered forward through the haze. "What's that?"

Williams shuddered. "Oh, god."

Humanoid forms hung limply from several of the tall spikes they'd seen earlier, blood caking the sides and gathering into rusty pools at their base. The scent of iron joined the smoke in the air. Shepard didn't think the victims could truly be called human anymore. Their hair and clothing were gone, along with their genitalia and any recognizable facial features. Their skin, if you wanted to give it that label, was blackened, ashy, shot through with strange blue markings. Mouths were opened in silent screams.

One twitched on its post.

Alenko's tone reflected her own sudden nausea. "They're- they're still alive?"

Words failed her. "We should…" What? Cut them down? Shoot them?

Without warning, the spikes telescoped back into their bases as one and shook loose their cargo. The victims promptly shambled to their feet and turned their empty eyes towards the squad.

"Put them down!" Shepard yelled, bringing her rifle up.

The fight was quick and brutal. Nothing short of total disintegration of their bodies would stop the transformed humans. Thankfully, they seemed to be held together with spit and cobwebs. Shepard discovered quickly that shooting them out at the knees was highly effective. They waited a moment, ready for another wave, scanning the foreground, but that seemed to be all of them.

"I almost wish it had been just brutality," Williams commented, emptily, eyeing the muddled meat of the corpses and the quiescent implements that bled them dry.

Shepard was grim. "The geth are making them into those… things. Those zombies. I've never heard of any technology like this."

The commander felt like they ought to try to disable the spikes, somehow, or kick them over at least, but she couldn't bring herself to approach them. There was a brooding malevolence about the devices, like something out of a legend, that made her skin crawl. Every instinct recoiled against the idea of touching them.

"More sheds." Alenko pointed ahead with his pistol. "Maybe more survivors."

The chief shuddered with disgust. "Or maybe more of _them_."

"That's enough, Williams," Shepard interjected. "It's worth checking out. We still don't understand what's happening here."

Shepard advanced cautiously. This whole mission had gone bad. There was some hope still of recovering the beacon, but Eden Prime would never be the same, not for years, not with this kind of destruction. A whole division of marines and god knew how many civilians were dead. The geth were back from behind the veil. How the hell had intel missed this?

They got within ten feet of the hatch when it zipped open and three humans, terrified and weak with relief, spilled out. "Oh, fuck me, we thought we were the only ones left!"

"I'm Commander Shepard, with the Alliance." She glanced over the trio. "Who are you?"

"Farmers. We saw that mothership come down, and ran for the sheds. Those machines are killing everyone!"

Funny how such a terrible story could become so monotonous, so quickly. "Tell me about this 'mothership'."

The farmer held his hands wide apart. "It was huge! Black, almost like some kind of insect, covered in lightening. It deposited all those machines and parked itself just past the spaceport. It's not far."

"I see." So it was a ship after all. She looked at Alenko. "You said the ship wasn't geth."

"It's not! At least not like anything they've used before. Not that I'm an expert."

"Alright. So we may be dealing with-" Everyone froze as a single pistol shot rang out from the direction of the spaceport, followed by silence. She waited for the return fire but it never came. "That wasn't geth."

The machines weren't using pistols. Their armaments would ring with staccato fire, not single shots.

"We need to go," Alenko said, urgently.

She turned matter-of-factly towards the farmers. "Thank you."

"Wait." One of the men grabbed the other's arm. "Look, they're military, we should tell them about the stuff."

"Stuff?" Shepard turned back. "What 'stuff'? Have you been holding out on me?"

"You just had to go and open your mouth." He didn't look pleased. "It's nothing. Look, we might have agreed to store some stuff in our sheds for a cut of the profits, ok? No harm in that."

"You lying asshole." She was furious. "You weren't coming back here to hide- you were coming to check on your merchandise!"

"It wasn't like that! I knew there were weapons in the shipment. I thought we could use them to protect ourselves." He unclipped it from his belt, and it obediently unfolded to its full size.

"In your hands, it'd just be giving a weapon to the geth." The man winced, but she didn't soften her tone. "Who's your contact at the depot?"

"I'm not telling you that!"

She drew her gun. "I think that you are."

"You're bluffing."

She was, but there was no need to let him know. Shepard nodded towards the pistol on his belt. "That's military-grade, stamped and everything. Just try me. I don't have time to argue." She sighted the gun.

His eyes widened as he stared down the barrel. "P-powell. His name is Powell."

And just like that she whisked away the gun and smiled, thinly. "Thanks. You've been very helpful."

"Bitch," he muttered, when she was not quite out of earshot, but it ran off her like water off a duck. It was far from the worst she'd ever been called, and she got what she needed.

Shepard didn't give the trio so much as a backward glance as they made for the spaceport. She could feel the growing disquiet in her squad.

Lieutenant Alenko, still uneasy about the punch, was unable to keep his thoughts to himself. "First you assault an assistant scientist, and then you threaten three civilians with your gun?"

She whirled on the spot. He nearly collided with her as she jabbed her finger into his chest. "That scientist was going to call every enemy combatant from here to creation. Not everyone deals with tragedy well. And if those so-called farmers were smuggling Alliance arms, who's to say they weren't smuggling information as well? We don't know how the geth pulled this off so quietly. Do you really think a bunch of colonial agriculture experts would know a geth agent from Adam?"

He swallowed. "No, Commander."

Shepard took a step back and shifted her gaze to include Chief Williams as well. "You're smart enough to figure this out. I know this isn't what we were expecting, but there's nothing for it but to keep moving forward. We're going to make it to that beacon, and we're going to get it into Alliance hands, and figure out what makes it worth starting a war- because that's exactly what this is. Just stay focused."

"Understood." Williams tossed off a salute, her own expression still burning with the dead of the 212.

Alenko looked away for a moment, bit his lip. "You're right, ma'am. I apologize. Let's get to that spaceport and get the hell out of here."

The dock was covered in bodies. Too many, apparently, for even the geth's sadistic purposes. Shepard could feel the slickness of their deaths under her boots as it trickled down the stairs in sticky lines, and wished, for the space of a moment, that she had her breather helm to avoid the stench. Smoke, fire, traces of munitions and explosives, machine oil and rocket fumes, mixed with all the very human scents of carnage made for a hell of a cocktail.

One of the corpses belonged to Nihlus. She knelt beside it. "One bullet to the head. Close-range, too. How does that happen to a spectre?"

"Movement, behind the crates." Williams' gun was already aimed. In a flash, Shepard and Alenko joined her.

A shaking man slowly stood, with both hands raised. "Don't shoot! Oh god, please don't shoot me."

"Who are you?" Shepard lowered her gun slightly.

"I work out here at the docks." He licked his lips. "Name's Powell."

Recognition dawned. "You're the farmer's smuggling contact."

"What? No! I mean, sure, maybe. It's not like anyone ever notices when a little goes missing off the top of those big military shipments!"

"You little bastard!" Williams was incensed. "We're out here busting our humps to protect your worthless asses and all you can think about is how to rip us off?!"

"It wasn't like I thought they'd ever have to use them!" He was sweating now, no doubt about it. "Who'd attack Eden Prime?"

Shepard threw out her arm to stop Williams from jumping on the guy, and replied with crisp sarcasm. "Yeah, a prime little colony like this sitting all ripe and juicy on the edge of the Terminus wouldn't attract any hostile attention. Did you manage to see any of the attack?"

"Yeah. Sure. I woke up when that mothership-"

"Wait. You woke up? Didn't you say you were working?"

"Sometimes I need forty winks to get through a shift, know what I mean? Nobody finds me behind these crates. Not even those machines."

Shepard was incredulous. "So first you tell us you're stealing from the Alliance, and then we find out the only reason you survived the attack is because you're lazy?"

"What was I supposed to do?" Powell shot back angrily. "I don't even have a gun!"

It was hard to argue the point, and this whole op was getting the better of her. Shepard refocused. "Alright. You saw the ship land. What happened next?"

"There was this- sound- I don't know how to describe it. I don't think it was in my ears." The dock worker shivered. "Made my head feel like it was going to split open, like my brain was turning to mush."

Alenko glanced at the commander. "They were probably trying to jam communications. We haven't gotten any transmissions from the surface since that ship appeared."

Shepard's nod was more confident than she felt. Everyone knew standard electronic communication frequencies didn't overlap human audible range. They could be looking at yet another exotic geth weapon, something to incapacitate targets, maybe make it easier to capture and spike their victims. "So what exactly were you smuggling? Arms? Information?"

He paled. "Look, I never… I'm a citizen of the Alliance, just like you."

She resisted the urge to smack the snot out of him. "I don't steal from my own people. Instead I risk my life protecting them. You're nothing like me."

"Sure. Right." Powell swallowed, looked between their faces, each equally grim, and coughed. "Look, all I did was take some stuff out of the big shipments, things nobody would miss. I may be a coward but I'm no traitor, ok? Just let me go."

He glared at them sullenly. Shepard ignored this, too. "Did you see who shot Nihlus?"

"Nihlus? Oh, the turian. Yeah. It was the other turian."

Her brow furrowed. "What other turian?"

"Your guy seemed to think he was a friend. Lowered his guard. Shot him right in the head!"

"Did you catch a name?"

"I think he called him Saren. It's hard to be sure, though. Like I said, I was sleeping." Powell eyed the three of them nervously, his eyes shifting from gun to gun.

She glanced at Williams, who shrugged. "Never heard of any Saren. Never heard of any turians on Eden Prime before this."

"I'll just be going now," Powell interrupted. "I need to get out of here."

"One last thing- do you know where they took the Prothean artifact they dug up south of here?"

The dock worker jerked his chin towards a tram rail running the length of the spaceport. "We took it to the other platform. It's all arrivals over here, not exports."

Shepard let him go. He slunk off, metaphorical tail between his legs. The dock was abandoned. Parts of it were on fire. Shepard was hardly a stranger to warzones, but each had its own unique kind of horror. This one stank of fear, shock, and panic. She licked her dry lips and raised her eyes up to the platform. "The train's stalled. There's a cargo platform halfway across."

Alenko moved up to an abandoned terminal and holstered his weapon. "I'll see what I can do."

As he worked, Shepard watched Powell until she couldn't see him anymore through the smoke. _If you ever wanted to know why it's always the good ones who die, it's because war favors weasels._

"I'm done." Alenko straightened as the platform groaned into motion and began sliding towards their end of the port.

She checked the action on her gun. "Keep an eye out for more of those spikes. We don't want to leave any behind us. Move out."

They fought their way to a cargo pallet and took it across the way, over a natural valley dividing the port. Nobody spoke at all on the ten minute ride. Whether the silence was out of exhaustion- they'd been on the surface, on high alert in a combat zone, for hours now- or out of shock or even respect for what occurred, she couldn't say.

Shepard spent it checking over her gear. It was a kind of meditation, something she'd done so many times it was almost comforting, and left her free to think. If the beacon was still on Eden Prime, Saren or whoever this other turian was would have it heavily defended. Shepard had only two goals now- get the beacon, if possible, and get her team extracted safely. Anyone else out there would be on their own. She fervently hoped it wouldn't come to that, but no three people could fight a full-scale invasion alone, and there was zero doubt remaining that was the precise nature of this attack.

"Approaching the station, Commander." Alenko was already straining his eyes ahead, searching for enemies.

"Very good, lieutenant." She slapped the heat sink back into the chamber. "Let's turn this place into a flashlight scrapyard."

The fighting started before their platform even came to a complete stop. She hit the dock at a flat run and dived behind a sheet metal guardrail, ducking over the top to provide cover fire as her squad moved into position. The geth weren't mindless, and it took a few exchanges to polish them off. "The bridge! Go!"

Alenko and Williams dashed ahead, up a ramp to traverse the highly exposed area between the rail and the eastern dock before more geth could return. Shepard followed, gun clutched to her chest and head tucked down to maximize shield efficiency. The whole time she felt like she had a giant target pasted on her suit.

"What is that?" Williams pointed. Alenko swore.

Shepard crouched next to the cylinder. "It's a bomb. They must be planning to blow the whole station." The timer blinked a host of information. "Looks like it's wired to three other devices, all synced up."

"We've got to shut them down!" Alenko fired at the geth massing at the far end of the station.

She ripped the front piece off the explosive, exposing the wiring. "Cover me!"

"Yes ma'am!" Her squad began sniping at the geth to force them to hold position, as their commander hastily sorted through the tangle of circuitry. Luckily, it was very basic. They must have been in a hurry. Unluckily, it was in sequence with the remaining bombs, so there was no way to disable it without starting the timers on its sister munitions.

She did it anyway. It was better than letting Saren set them off at his leisure and catch them by surprise. "Done! We've got to find the other ones ASAP."

As they ran, Alenko panted, "Where did you learn to take apart a bomb?"

"N7, remember?" Despite everything, she grinned. "Did you think it was just for looking badass in recruitment mags?"

"Geth!" Williams called out, crouching against a wall.

They fought through the defense, lighter than Shepard had feared, and there was a collective exhale as she diffused the final bomb with thirty seconds to spare. There was enough ordinance to level the entire spaceport. Saren was playing hardball.

The geth were all either dead or gone, along with the zombies they'd found guarding the beacon.

It was something to behold. As tall as three men, it glowed faintly green in the haze and smoke, and was to all appearances undamaged, a small victory against the losses here today. Of Saren, there was no sign, and the insectile ship departed around the same time they arrived at the port.

Williams was startled by the glow. "It wasn't doing that before."

"We'll let the scientists figure it out once we get our asses out of here." Shepard turned away, radioing their position so the Normandy could come pick them up.

Alenko and Williams continued staring at the device.

"Real working prothean tech," the lieutenant said, amazed. "Just imagine what it can teach us."

"It's a wonder, alright." Chief Williams shook her head. "I just hope it was worth it. C'mon."

She turned and sauntered back towards Shepard. Alenko continued to admire the device, drifting a few steps closer. Then another few. He found, suddenly, that he was unable to control his own steps, no matter how he dug in his heels. His whole body started to shake.

Shepard caught sight of him out of the corner of her eye. "Shit!"

She pushed past Williams and made a flying leap, managing to grab him about the waist and half-haul, half-toss him to safety before the alien device seized control of her own body in his stead.

Shepard started a good deal closer to the beacon than Alenko. It was a matter of moments before it gripped her with the full power of an extraordinary alien device from the previous masters of the galaxy, and lifted her from the ground, transfixing her in midair.

Alenko shook off the blow and made to go after her, but Williams held him down. "No! It's too dangerous!"

Shepard was in her own world. Scenes of carnage far surpassing anything she'd ever witnessed flashed through her mind, disjointed, chaotic. No image held long enough for her to focus or fathom its purpose. Her whole frame shook, her eyes strained so far open that she feared the lids would tear. Unrecognizable people painted in orange flame sobbed in pain. Here a creature screamed, intensely, primal, in a way that sent a signal straight to her mammalian hindbrain with an overwhelming command to flee- but she couldn't. She was held in the beacon's thrall, to bear witness to these terrible things. She couldn't even scream herself despite the raw agony illuminating every nerve her body. Her spine arced with the force of the conflict and the power of the visions moving through her.

Then there was a massive wave of energy- the beacon's hold vanished- and she fell into darkness.


	6. Chapter 6

Lieutenant Kaidan Alenko sat in the Normandy's infirmary reading a book. The first hours, the bad ones, when he and Gunnery Chief Williams had carried the unconscious commander back to the ship, when nobody was sure the extent of her injuries, were behind them. Dr. Chakwas, so concerned at first, now felt confident there was no lasting harm that her instruments could detect, and it was only a matter of time until her patient's brain repaired itself sufficiently to wake.

Alenko, however, noted all the "should" and "I thinks" in the doctor's explanation, and thought it best to park himself here. He'd had his share of waking up alone in coldly clinical rooms on Jump Zero, and the commander was a friend. He was worried.

Though the worst of it seemed over, he didn't truly relax until Shepard groaned and stirred a bit on the table. He set the book aside. "Dr. Chakwas? I think she's waking up."

The elderly doctor hustled over. She was quick to whip out her pen light and shine it into Shepard's eyes, critically. "How do you feel?"

Shepard made a kind of pained sound. "Like the day after shore leave."

Dr. Chakwas tutted, but she was smiling. "I think you can try sitting up. Easy does it."

Slowly, the commander raised herself until she was perched on the edge of the table, rubbing her head. She caught sight of Alenko and blinked. "How long was I out?"

"About fifteen hours, give or take," he said. There was real concern in his voice. "We couldn't wake you up after the beacon… did whatever it did. Williams and I had to carry you back here."

A small smile. "Thanks."

He returned it. "What else are us lowly grunts good for, right?"

She snorted laughter and immediately regretted it. "God, I feel like my head's going to split open."

Chakwas felt around the base of her skull and neck with careful, gentle movements. "Everything seems to be in place. I think you just got a nasty bump when you landed, likely a concussion. I recommend taking it easy the next few days. And swallow these."

She handed her a paper cup of pills, which Shepard slammed down before accepting a small cup of water.

The light-hearted expression faded from Alenko's face. "Anyway, it was my fault. I was too curious. I must have triggered some kind of defensive mechanism when I got too close."

"No." Another smile, this one meant to soothe more than convey anything like mirth. "You couldn't have known what would happen. It was my command. My fault."

Shepard felt like she'd been hit by a mako going at top speed. Her whole body was one big ache. The images from the beacon were still clear as glass in her mind, and as sharp. Her thoughts shrank from them.

Almost on cue, the doctor commented, "I did detect some strange activity in your brain scan. Abnormal beta waves, usually indicative of some kind of intense dreaming."

"More like a nightmare," she muttered, staring past her knees to the cross-hatched metal floor. Now that it was over, it felt… well, what would she think if a soldier came to her and claimed to have been granted visions from an alien device? She changed the subject. "Did the beacon make it on board?"

"No," said a voice from the doorway. "It exploded after it did… whatever it did to you. Maybe we'll be able to get something from the pieces. Maybe not."

Shepard's feet touched the floor and she managed to pull herself to a semi-relaxed attention. The last thing she wanted was to appear an invalid in front of the captain.

He nodded to her, pleased, and glanced around the room. "I need to speak with the commander. Alone."

"Right, sir," Alenko said. "I'll be in the mess if you need me."

He spoke to the captain, but he glanced at Shepard before he left, followed by the doctor.

"How are you feeling?" Anderson asked, his voice crisper and less compassionate than Chakwas'.

"How do you think?" She shook her head- another mistake- and continued, a bite in her tone. "The mission goes to hell because our intel can't find their backsides with both hands and a flashlight, civilian and military casualties stacked to the sky, including one of mine, and we didn't even manage to recover our primary objective."

"Don't lecture me, Shepard. The geth haven't been seen outside the veil in three hundred years. Nobody could have predicted that. And Saren." Anderson snorted disgust. "Saren's not just any spectre. He's a living legend, one of the Citadel's most accomplished agents, and Nihlus' mentor on top of that. This is bad, Shepard. Real bad."

"You're telling me." She closed her eyes and rubbed her temples with her index fingers. "Why attack Eden Prime? He's a spectre for god's sake. We may not sit on the Council, but we're allied with them."

Anderson sighed and rubbed his face, looking old, and tired. "Saren hates humans. He thinks we're growing too fast, overstepping ourselves and becoming a menace to the galaxy. A lot of aliens feel that way. And now that the Council is starting to sympathize with us, just a little bit, now that we've got agreements to settle their problem territories, maybe he's decided it's time to take matters into his own hands. He's got an army of geth at his command, and attacking Eden Prime is nothing less than an act of war."

"He has to know neither the Council nor the hierarchy is going to condone this." As plans went, this struck Shepard as a particularly poor one. "If his goal is to force humanity back to Earth, or wipe us out, it's going to take a lot more than one ship of machines."

"True." The captain rubbed his chin. "But he could be counting on the Council finding a way to stay neutral in the fight. He may even be right about that. The fact that they invented a shadow organization like the spectres should tell you how little they appreciate dirt on their hands."

She shook her head and raised her eyes. "It won't matter. We'll find some way to take him down, with or without their help."

Anderson paced. "It's not that simple. Spectres can go anywhere, do just about anything. We don't have that kind of mobility and after this disaster your odds of joining their ranks have decreased substantially."

"I didn't do anything wrong!" she began, hotly, but Anderson held up his hand to quiet her.

"You think I don't know that? It doesn't matter. The Council is only going to see that the beacon is lost and Nihlus is dead."

She crossed her arms and leaned back on the table, frustrated. "What now, sir? The Citadel needs to know about Saren. Even if they don't believe us."

He peered at her intently. "I've got Alenko and Williams' reports. Can you tell me anything else? Did the beacon reveal anything to you, anything at all that could help our case?"

"I…" Shepard wasn't sure how to say in a way that didn't sound completely insane. "I had some kind of… vision."

"A vision?" That seemed the last thing he expected to hear. He chewed his lip. "What sort of vision?"

"War. Death." She shrugged, kicked at the floor with the toe of her boot, then looked back up at him. "Fire. Somebody was getting a real ass-kicking, sir. Whole planets were under attack by synthetics. It's too disjointed to make any sense of it." Shepard paused, and said, slowly. "Nobody knows what happened to the Protheans, how they died out. Do they?"

"No, they do not. And it's likely that whatever information you got, Saren has as well." He shook his head. "He didn't take the beacon with him. I doubt it's because he couldn't make it work. It's because he got what he needed. Damn it."

She watched him pace for another minute, chewing things over. Finally, he said, "The Council needs to know about this."

"What, all of it?" Shepard was surprised. "They'll think I'm out of my mind."

"It's another piece of the puzzle. Evidence towards what Saren wants, and what he's planning." He folded his arms. "I've arranged for us to travel to the Citadel. Joker should be approaching now. Walk up to the bridge and tell him to initiate docking protocols. Then go and get yourself ready to meet with the ambassador."

She drew herself up. "Yes, sir."

He paused at the door. "Oh, and one other thing. I've had Williams transferred to the Normandy. We can use someone with her courage."

"Respectfully, sir, I don't want her on my ship." Shepard gave him a level look. "She shouldn't be near active duty at the very least until she's had a psych eval. The entire 212 was just destroyed in front of her by monsters out of childhood stories."

"I seem to remember another bright young woman who damn near mutinied when her C.O. suggested the exact same thing," Anderson replied, with irony but very little humor. "Alenko recommended the transfer and he's got solid judgment, and the marines are his purview. Anyway, it's my ship, and it's done. If it becomes a problem you'll deal with it later."

Anderson nodded, and left her standing alone in the infirmary. She tried a shaky step, and found it wasn't as hard as she thought. Either the meds or her brain was sorting itself back out.

She hit the pad to open the hatch and nearly collided with Alenko.

"Sorry, ma'am," he said. "I just saw the captain leave, and I left my book."

He nodded to the other end of the room. Shepard looked at it, and looked back at him, connecting for the first time that he must have sat there the whole fifteen hours, and this was after a grueling mission that exhausted the lot of them. It left her with a warm rush of affection for him. Not many people would have cared enough. Anderson sure hadn't. "How are you holding up?"

"You're asking me?" It was his turn to be surprised.

"It couldn't have been easy for you either," she suggested. "Losing Jenkins and all."

"Yeah." He sighed. "This might sound odd, given everything, but that was the first time I've lost someone under my command. And all those dead civilians… It's going to take awhile to process. I'm just glad we didn't lose you too."

"It's a club nobody wants to join. Tell you what. When we get to the Citadel, we'll find a dive bar somewhere and raise a few glasses in his honor."

"I think he'd like that, ma'am."

Shepard rubbed her head again. "Council's not going to be happy about any of this."

"That's for sure. Probably try to use it to lever more concessions from the Alliance." He rolled his eyes. "Politics. What are you going to do?"

A snort of what might have been laughter. "Spot on, I think. Council politics are way above my paygrade, that's for damn sure."

He shrugged. "Maybe not for long, if the captain has his way."

"Gossip travels fast." She wasn't entirely pleased to hear her vetting had become public knowledge among the crew.

"That it does, ma'am. Sometimes it's better to keep some things to yourself."

"That stuff you'll tell me about someday."

"That, yeah." He leaned against the doorway, and folded his arms. "Though I can't see that this is something to be ashamed of."

The worst part of Akuze wasn't the attack. It was the circus that came after. The medal ceremony. The promotion. The interviews. All the accolades due a hero, simply for being too damn stubborn, tenacious, and lucky to die. Trying to make sense of what had happened in private while playing the resilient bright-eyed toy soldier in public, undaunted, proud to serve.

This opportunity had the same feel to it, like someone was seeing what they wanted to believe, rather than something she'd earned honestly. Humanity wanted a spectre; she was in the right place at the right time. They needed a symbol. Just like damned Akuze.

She gave him an even look. "Some things I keep private, too."

Alenko held up his hands. "Fair enough, ma'am. Can I get my book now?"

"Right. Sure." Shepard blinked and stepped out of the way. She watched pick up the paperback and flex the pages to keep it closed. "You're right, it's not anything to be ashamed of. I just feel like the only reason they're considering me at all is because I'm half-ghost."

"I don't know. Not many people can claim that. You could charge them to rub you for luck."

She stared at him the space of a startled moment, and then started to laugh. He chuckled. Shepard shook her head. "I need to get to the bridge. Apparently our pilot needs a little direction."

Alenko nodded. "See you later, commander."

She walked away from the meeting a little lighter. Or maybe it was just Chakwas' magic pills finally kicking in.

Williams was sitting on the stairs up to the CIC, staring at her hands. Shepard studied her a long moment, before the girl noticed. The gunnery chief was a pretty thing, never an advantage in the military, and wore her long brown hair in a knot at the base of her skull. She'd handled a rifle like a pro. Infantry clearly suited her. She was still in her armor, the white and red standing out against the somber navy blue of the ship, and the helmet lay next to her.

Shepard leaned against the wall, arms folded. "We try not to block the stairwell around here, chief. Too many people coming back and forth."

Williams started. Shepard gave her an easy smile to calm her down, and gradually the girl settled back. "Sorry, ma'am. Haven't got my billet yet."

"Anderson can be a bit vague on details sometimes. We'll get you sorted out." She studied her face closely. "How are you holding up?"

Williams picked up the helmet and turned it over in her hands. "I've seen friends die before, but my whole unit… there were so many dead down there. I… honestly, ma'am, I haven't seen much in the way of combat outside training exercises. I've mostly had ground postings."

"You did well. It won't get better, but it will get easier. I promise." Shepard tried for encouraging.

"You can't promise that." Her head jerked up. "When I think of them all, Jackson with his stupid magazines, Bhatia and her cooking…"

"Yesterday, when we were headed for the relay, I thought about how Park would always get sick every single time we made a jump, never failed. It's been almost six years."

"You lost a unit, ma'am?" Williams sounded doubtful, and Shepard found herself bemused. It was so rare to have to introduce herself to fellow soldiers these days.

"Yeah. 50 marines. I was an L.T. then. A colony completely dropped off the radar, suspected terrorist activity, so they sent in special ops. Never found any terrorists, or colonists for that matter, but a whole lot of thresher maws."

"Holy shit." Williams was suddenly mortified. "You're THAT Shepard? From Akuze?"

She didn't bother to reply. "C'mon. Joker's taking us into the nebula now. I hear it's a helluva view."

Shepard held out her hand and hauled Williams to her feet. They reached the bridge just in time to see the Normandy dive into the petals of the giant station. She glanced at Joker. "The captain says we're ready to dock."

"Aye aye, ma'am." Joker made a marginal adjustment to the pitch of the ship.

Williams all but pressed her nose to the glass. "Wow."

"Hard to believe it's really that big." Shepard had only been to the Citadel a handful of times herself, and spent the approach below decks. It really was spectacular. The whole station was lily-shaped, pearly white on the outside and flecked with rosy orange lights and fixtures within.

Clutched in its center, like a prized jewel, was the largest space ship in the Galaxy.

Williams was quick to spot it. "What's that?"

"The Destiny Ascension." Joker chuckled. "Head of the Citadel Fleet."

"It's huge! I bet it could rip through the hull of any ship in the Alliance!"

"Well, size isn't everything. You need firepower too." He winked at Shepard behind Williams' back.

She rolled her eyes. "I should knock that cap straight off your head."

Williams looked over her shoulder. "Huh?"

"Nothing." Joker cleared his throat. "Citadel Control, this is the _SSV Normandy_, requesting permission to dock."

"That's our cue," Shepard said, turning to leave the bridge. "I think Rosamund is about your size."

"Huh?" Williams trotted along behind her.

"Anderson wants the ground team to be available to the ambassador. Udina is putting together a case to present to the Council. That means dress blues." She gave the chief a dry glance. "Unless you're hiding a uniform somewhere in that armor, I need to find you a set."

Ten minutes later, they were both dressed and standing side-by-side in the women's restroom aboard the _Normandy_. Shepard was braiding her hair back, into a spiral winding around the back of her head, a style called a conch shell. It was somewhat more formal than her customary bun, and somewhat more interesting than pinning it back. Her long red hair was her sole conceit; it would take a lot more work and a kind eye to make her pretty, but her hair could look nice.

Williams suffered from no such dilemma. Shuffling in front of the sink, tugging on her makeshift uniform, freshly showered and pink-cheeked, she looked like a recruitment ad come to life. Shepard was damn sure she never had to get _her_ dress blues tailored to fit correctly. Like all infantry, Williams was fit, but she still filled it out in all the right places- quite unlike Shepard, who wouldn't even have to wear a bra if it weren't for regs.

She squashed the nascent tendril of jealousy and tied off the end of her braid. "Ready, chief?"

Williams bit her lip and glanced at the commander sidelong. "You don't think he'll ask me any questions, do you, commander?"

"He might. That _is_ why Anderson is bringing us along." Her brow furrowed. "Is that a problem?"

She swallowed. "No, ma'am. I'm just not used to this kind of attention, is all."

"Don't overthink it. This is easy." Shepard's mouth quirked at the corner. "Just answer clearly and honestly, and let his twisty politician's mind do all the translating to Council-speak."

That got her a half a smile, and Joker's voice crackled over the comm, in broadcast mode. "Captain, docking procedures are complete. The ambassador's shuttle is waiting."

Shepard smoothed her jacket one last time. "Let's go find out exactly what these Council bastards want."


	7. Chapter 7

The fun part was clearly well and truly over. The ambassador's car was waiting at the Alliance dock to whisk them off to the central ring that formed the base of the massive station, where each of the arms attached. The elite of the Citadel lived in a garden-world environment, complete with a ring-shaped lake and a holographic sky. They called it the Presidium. Here, every day was warm and sunny. As the car zipped over the azure water, it was hard for Shepard to remember the hazy, fire-strewn carnage of Eden Prime. The memories ran together with all the other battlefields, washed away in the rushing of the air and the calm of the district.

Anderson spent the whole ride with his hands folded in his lap, staring stonily at nothing at all. Shepard was slouched back so far in her seat that the top of her skull was level with the bottom of the headrest, her arms crossed over her chest and her eyes half-lidded. Her head was throbbing, a love note from her concussion. Williams continued to fiddle with her uniform until Shepard was certain the piping would tear loose. Alenko, for his part, had his nose glued to the window, admiring the scenery.

Upon arrival the party of four was hustled straight up to the offices of Ambassador Udina, who had a voice like a bulldog and a face perpetually lemon-bit. His suit was expensively tailored and what hair he possessed immaculately groomed. He also apparently had a talent for pissing off the Council. The quartet walked in just as he was finishing a call.

"We will not discuss this here, Udina," the turian councilor chided, with a hint of anger. "This is for the hearing and not before."

Udina might have tried for a last word, but at that moment the Council cut the call. So instead he and spared no time informing them of their inconvenience, turning his rage on Anderson. "Captain. I see you brought half your crew with you."

"Just the ground team from Eden Prime," Anderson replied mildly. "I thought they might be needed to answer some questions."

Udina looked down his long nose at the three soldiers. It was an impressive feat considering the ambassador was a rather short man. Shepard herself had a significant height advantage. She stared him down, and was mildly impressed when he didn't blink. "I see. And what have you been up to, Anderson? I hear reports of geth, and dead spectres."

"Saren shot Nihlus," Shepard stated firmly. "He's the one who brought geth to Eden Prime."

"So you say. And I suppose he managed to destroy the beacon as well?" Udina dripped with sarcasm.

"The beacon's loss was unfortunate, but impossible to foresee," Anderson said sharply.

"Your hamfistedness cost us Eden Prime, allowed a traitor to escape, and led to the death of the one of the few who could have given us our first human spectre." His stared piercingly at Shepard, stroking his chin, before sliding his gaze back to the captain. "You of all people should know better than to meddle with spectres, Anderson. It was bad enough that she's your protégé."

"And where were you twenty years ago, ambassador? Aside from kissing the ass of any politician on Arcturus who stood still long enough for your lips to get a good grip?"

Udina's face went purple. Shepard took a step forward, subtly insinuating herself between the two men. "What are the councilors looking for, exactly?"

"Hrm. Proof." Udina's lips thinned. "They don't make up their minds quickly- that would be the asari influence- and they don't play hunches."

She lifted her chin and folded her arms. "So how do we find them proof?"

Anderson glanced at her. "While you were knocked out, I sent ahead our reports about the attack. Citadel Security initiated an investigation into our claims about Saren."

"Sounds like you got an audience, anyway." She glanced at Udina.

"We will present our case against, hrm, Mr. Arterius, as will C-Sec. If we can get his spectre status revoked it will help immensely in the search for this fugitive." Udina cleared his throat. "Unfortunately, their word will carry more weight than ours. C-Sec is well-regarded on the Citadel and they're full of turians."

These days every human schoolchild knew the Citadel was built by Protheans and discovered by the asari in pre-historical times. They knew the Council was founded by asari and salarians, and the turians were invited to join their ranks after proving their commitment to galactic freedom during the Rachni Wars- universally events that occurred while humans were still fumbling around in the metaphorical dark, trying to find their collective bottom with both hands. Humanity, far from being the masters of the cosmos imagined in earlier times, was afforded a spacious office for a lone ambassador with no authority, persuasion and access his only tools. Like the other lesser races before them, their second-class citizen status was a given. As far as the rest of the galaxy was concerned it wasn't even scandalous.

Non-participation was not an option. Anyone who might think otherwise need look no further than the batarians, who opted out voluntarily in a fit of spite. Now the Hegemony might as well be the Terminus for all the safety or law that ruled there, and they were nearly as isolated, economically, a second hammer blow to their worlds. Or perhaps the quarians, who were denied an embassy in punishment for the creation of the geth, and were still galactic vagrants with no home and even less respect three centuries later.

It was a small wonder that humans were considered a rogue element, Shepard sometimes thought, in her more charitable moments. They possessed a militant heritage the equal of the turians, with none of the reverence for authority. They had the diplomatic savvy of the asari without the inherent respect for the process or their allies. And if they couldn't match the salarian's technical prowess, they could certainly equal their curiosity. Humanity was seen as volatile, unpredictable, contemptuous, juvenile, and power-hungry. And they were eating up open territory in the galaxy huge swaths at a time.

Watching Udina rant and scowl now, Shepard was certain he had done little to impress any other reputation on their alien friends.

Anderson was stern. "C-Sec is charged with upholding the law, regardless of stature or species. They'll do their job."

"You don't seriously believe that." Udina snorted. "I've been on this Citadel nearly since we knew of its existence. The Council makes a good show respecting every species, but make no mistake. This is a clique, captain, and humanity is on the outside looking in."

"The facts are on our side." Anderson was concerned, but unruffled. This wasn't his first battle. "It will have to be enough."

"Hmm." The ambassador turned his attention back to Shepard, with that same piercing glare. "A spectre's weight could have helped us considerably. A shame."

She opened her mouth, but Anderson got there first. "She's not out of the running yet. We just have to make our case."

"Yes. Well, we will certainly do our best. Eden Prime demands answers." Udina straightened his jacket. "Captain, I need to review a few details with you before the hearing, and I need to get clearances in place for your, ah, guests."

It wasn't a request. Anderson turned to his crew. "Go enjoy the Presidium. I'll contact you by omnitool when the proceedings are about to begin."

"Aye aye, sir." They saluted, and soon found themselves on the other side of Udina's locked door.

Shepard leaned against the wall and pinched the bridge of her nose. "Why do I get the feeling he's going to be a continual problem?"

"Because he's a politician?" Alenko suggested, unhelpfully.

"They're all worthless," Williams spat. "Still, one of their people is dead, and that's got to rankle."

Shepard knew it was the appropriate moment to say that Nihlus was a good man, but hell, she didn't know. He'd been a pain in the ass for the two days she knew him. She wasn't much for deifying the dead. Jenkins was the same way. A good kid, though she couldn't in honesty call him a good soldier- but he'd literally died trying, Shepard would give him that much. She could pawn the letter off on Anderson as the C.O. of the ship, but she was on the ground with him, and it ought to be her. Damn it.

The commander pushed herself off the wall and blew out a breath. "Well, looks like we've got some time on our hands. Let's figure out what makes this place one of the wonders of the galaxy."

The ramps took them out to the lowest level of the Presidium, where broad boulevards looked over the water. "I wonder if it's a sign of favor or insignificance that our embassy is so close to the lake?"

"Insignificance, definitely." Lieutenant Alenko sounded certain.

She raised an eyebrow. "What makes you so sure?"

He shrugged. "I have some friends who live on the Citadel. Property values are steeper the higher you go, when it comes to the Presidium."

"You've been here before, L.T.?" Williams was curious.

"The Citadel, sure." Another shrug. "The Presidium, no. Believe it or not, it's heavily access-controlled."

"It'd be a shame if the cream had to mix with the rabble, huh?" Shepard observed dryly.

"I don't know. This is home to some of the most powerful people in the galaxy. People like that make enemies, and when they fall they do a lot of collateral damage in the process." Alenko was peering up now, at the rows upon rows of balconies clinging like nests to the cylindrical wall.

Williams crossed her arms, her contempt clear. "What, they may be evil little bastards, but since it'd be chaos otherwise, they should be _protected_?"

"Pretty much." He stuck his hands in his pockets. "Sure is a pretty place, though."

The three marines made their way along the street, heading lengthwise down the ring. Every so often they passed a side corridor vanishing into the recesses of the station. There weren't many pedestrians this time of day, and those that were out and about set a leisurely pace. Shepard said, "I'm surprised there are so many humans."

"Makes sense. We're near the Alliance dock." Alenko tried not to stare as a salarian swathed in robes shuffled by. "Plenty of aliens, too."

Chief Williams made a sound in the back of her throat, an ugly sort of laugh. "It's hard to tell the aliens from the animals."

Shepard and Alenko exchanged a startled did-you-just-hear-that look. In truth, it wasn't any worse than a thousand other remarks that peppered the dialogue of the Alliance Navy, particularly at the sub-officer ranks. But it was another thing altogether to hear it in the heart of the Citadel, in hearing range of the same aliens she disparaged.

"We're not exactly shooting the breeze in the duty locker, chief," Shepard finally said, lightly enough, but it was impossible to mistake her meaning.

"Yeah." The chief scuffed her boot on the metal street with too much force to be accident.

"Yeah _what_?" Shepard asked sharply.

Williams cleared her throat. "Yes, ma'am. Sorry, ma'am. The war's a bit of a sore spot with my family, is all."

"Join the club."

"Your family fought in the war?" Her interest was peaked.

Shepard held up two fingers. "Both my parents fought in the liberation of Shanxi. Left me stuffing myself on tamales at my grandmother's house back on Earth. I don't think I even knew what was happening until it was already over."

"I bet they were both officers too."

There was an edge to that comment Shepard didn't quite grasp. "No, actually. My mother has a higher rank than me, but the same title. My father never made it to officer candidate school before he was discharged."

That set Williams back on her heels. "I'm sorry, ma'am. These things just usually run in families, that's all. It's who you know, right?"

"My dad resigned under less than ideal circumstances," Alenko said mildly. "They still gave me a commission. What's your problem, anyway?"

"No problem, sir." Williams gave herself a shake. "With your permission, sir, ma'am, I think I'm going to clear my head awhile."

"Granted," Shepard said immediately, and watched the young woman stride away, tension in every line of her body. "The hell was that about?"

Alenko shrugged. "You got me. She seems to have quite a chip on her shoulder, and she's been through a lot the last few days."

"As long as it doesn't keep her from doing her job, and she doesn't start any fights while we're on the station, I guess I can live with it." Shepard almost had to laugh, it was so absurd. She shook her head. "By the way, I meant to tell you- nice job on the ground. I've never had the opportunity to fight alongside a biotic before. I can see why the Alliance goes to such lengths to recruit you."

The signing bonuses for biotic-talented recruits who passed the psychological exams were becoming legendary in the navy. The rates of occurrence were very low to begin with, and not very many of the human biotics were old enough to enlist, much less interested in doing so.

He smiled, a self-effacing gesture. "That isn't why I did it, but thanks all the same."

"I'd like the chance to practice against you sometime, when we're back on the ship. I don't know if geth have a turn for biotics or not, but plenty of aliens sure do, and I could use the experience."

"If it's all the same to you, commander, I'd rather not." His tone was polite, but final.

Shepard was surprised. "Why not? I'm sure we can find the space."

"I don't like using my abilities against living targets when I can help it. It's playing with fire." He folded his arms.

She blinked. "Surely you need the practice, too, lieutenant. It's hard to stay combat-ready any other way. If I were you, I'd want to make certain every tool in my box was sharp."

"You're not me," Alenko said with sharp exasperation. "Look, that scholarship I told you about? I got it because it turns out it's pretty unethical to shove untested tech into teenagers' brains, or teach a thirteen-year-old kid to slam another kid into a wall, even under the guise of 'exploring the potential of human biotics' or 'teaching us to control our gifts', and taking it was easier than dragging my family through a lawsuit we wouldn't win anyway. It leaves a bad taste in the mouth, you know?"

She was taken aback. "I didn't know."

"I don't like talking about it."

"Understandable." They walked in silence a few minutes. Alenko studied the lake. Shepard was thinking furiously.

After awhile, she said, slowly, "We get taught a lot about how to fire a gun, how to hold it and maintain it use it properly. But at first we don't get taught a lot about why to fire- when ordered, that's what we're told. And at first it's enough. Later though, those are the situations that haunt you, in your bunk after a mission when you try to sleep. Those times when you have a choice that _must _be made, and there's nobody there to give an order."

"This is what I'm saying. I've… had too many of those nights."

Shepard nodded, sympathetic. "Me too. But lieutenant? Sometimes, it was the right choice to discharge my weapon. Sometimes, it was the only choice. And I'm damn glad I knew how to do it without hesitation when the time came."

His brow furrowed, and his expression changed from defensive to more thoughtful. She put her hand on his shoulder. "I'm sorry I made the request so lightly. I won't do it again. But think about it, maybe? I was serious about needing the practice. It seems like everyone out there is better at this biotics stuff than us, and not all of them are friendlies."

"I.. I'll think about it, ma'am."

"That's all I'm asking." She paused in her step as a light on her omnitool lit up.

Alenko peered at it. "Is it time?"

"No… that's odd. It's a summons from C-Sec." Her brow furrowed.

"You were the only one who didn't send a report over," Alenko reasoned. "Maybe they to interview you, as evidence."

"Maybe." The explanation was plausible, but it didn't match the feeling in her gut. "I'm going to see what they want. You'll be here?"

"Until they call for us, yeah."

Shepard spotted the sign directing her to C-Sec HQ illuminated against the wall, and was already moving when she responded to the call. "This is Commander Shepard."

The faint growl of a turian greeted her voice. "Commander," it purred. "I'm glad I was able to reach you before the hearing. Can you meet me, briefly, now?"

"What's this about?"

"I'd rather not say over an unsecure link. There's a tea shop not far from Udina's office. I'll meet you there." The call cut off.

"It never rains but it pours," Shepard muttered, but she backtracked to the ambassador's office and found the shop in short order.

The place had a slightly bohemian feel, in an upscale way. It was mid-morning. The café was half-full of sleepy late risers and uptight Citadel support staff, busily talking into their omnitools and ignoring the uniformed man in the corner, quietly sipping at a mug while his eyes sweeped the entire shop at regular intervals.

He saw her when she pushed through the curtain over the door, and waved her over with a clawed hand. "Commander."

"I assumed you'd want to speak with me eventually," she said, taking a seat. "I never imagined it would be so informal."

That almost elicited a smile. "Yes, well, the circumstances are evolving rapidly. Council affairs are like oil- thick and viscous and barely mobile when things get started, but once it heats up…"

"I see." A server swooped down on their table, and Shepard ordered the first thing she spotted on the levo side of the menu, some kind of green tea from asari space. She might be spec ops, but she never had any patience for cloak-and-dagger bullshit. Action was preferable to what amounted to an international rumor mill. "Who are you and what do you want?"

"My name is Garrus Vakarian," the turian said. "I'm the officer at C-Sec assigned to oversee the Saren investigation. I don't have access to all the data- as a spectre most of his work is classified well above my pay grade- but what I have found is troubling, to say the least."

"So you believe us." That was an unexpected surprise.

"Let's say I'm willing to buy your arguments for the moment." His mandibles flared. His face was painted with blue geometric stripes Shepard vaguely remembered represented an individual's colonial origins, but she couldn't have said which one. "Unfortunately, the executor disagrees with my findings. Saren is a very influential figure on the Citadel. Rebranding him as a traitor is problematic. I've been ordered to close my investigation."

"What, they're going to simply ignore the findings?" Shepard was flabbergasted. "What was the point of involving C-Sec as a neutral body?"

"First lesson of Citadel politics. Nobody is neutral." This was uttered in the tones of a world-class cynic. "Anyway, right now the evidence is inconclusive. The executor fears it will become… more conclusive, if my work continues."

She shook her head. "Why tell me this?"

"Because I think I can trust you." He sat back and picked up his cup, took a sip. "I don't know if you're aware, but you've been under C-Sec investigation for years. We've got a whole directory on you. Nihlus made it clear he wanted an airtight case for your probable spectre candidacy prepared before he involved undertook field tests. From what I've seen, you do the right thing, if sometimes in your own way. I can respect that."

The server returned, bearing a steaming cup, and set it down in front of Shepard. A look from the commander forestalled any hovering questions of could she get her anything else. She turned her gaze back to Vakarian. "The Alliance doesn't like that streak in me, you know. They don't appreciate their orders being subject to creative interpretation."

"Neither does the Hierarchy. But the spectres, well, that's rather what they look for. Initiative, sound judgment, a dash of insanity. You were handpicked from literally hundreds of candidates, most of them not human. Take that for what it's worth."

"Huh." Shepard tried the tea. It had a pleasant citrus aftertaste. "If Nihlus explained it like that, I might have been more enthused about the position."

That got a laugh. She found herself warming to this C-Sec officer, strange and off regs as the meeting was. "So what are you going to do?"

"I'm going to keep looking into Saren. Off-record, obviously. And you have a hearing to get to."

Almost on cue, her omnitool lit up with Anderson's code. "Damn it."

She punched the button and went through thirty seconds of conversation, confirming the Council was ready to receive them. By the time she looked back up, the turian was gone.


	8. Chapter 8

Her two marines apparently got the message, because Shepard found them both waiting near the elevator up the Presidium tower. "We should head up."

"Right," Alenko said, tearing his gaze away from a very strange-looking alien busily repairing a terminal along the boulevard. It crouched on four insectile legs, the head snaking up from the bulbous body crowned with two wide, black eyes. Delicate hands manipulated the HI with the ease of a master, but there was something off about the creature, to Shepard's sensibilities, like nobody was home despite the obvious intellect.

"The hell is that?" she asked.

Chief Williams snorted, crossing her arms. "That asari VI called it a 'keeper' when the L.T. got too close. Apparently, they're critical to station operations and interfering with them or their work is subject to strict penalties."

"I've heard of them, but never seen one up close," Alenko added. "They burrow into parts of the station even the Council can't access. The asari say the keepers were already here when they found the station thousands of years ago. They could date all the way back to the Protheans themselves."

The creature kept at its work, oblivious to the conversation. Shepard wasn't easily unnerved, but its passive, unblinking stare into the depths of the terminal gave her goosebumps. "Are they self-aware?"

"Not as far as anyone can tell," he said.

"They give me the creeps." Williams shuddered.

Alenko flushed. "I just find them interesting, that's all."

"I get the impression there's very little you don't find interesting, lieutenant," Shepard observed, her mouth quirking at the corner.

"Well, why join up if you're not interested in seeing the galaxy, right? There's so much out there we don't know anything about."

"Oh, I don't know, sir." Williams' sarcasm was plain. "Tradition, loyalty, protecting humanity…"

Shepard shut it down before it could turn into an argument. "Enough. The captain's waiting on us."

They found the elevator, and submitted to a VI scan before being permitted to ascend to the council chamber at the highest level of the presidium tower. The VI seemed startled that the three humans cleared its security protocols, if you could ascribe an emotion to a VI. Apparently the audience Udina wrangled for their cause was unusual.

They rode up in a tense silence. After a small eternity, the doors opened onto an enormous, vaulting chamber, filled with the murmur of fountains and hushed conversations. Shepard was startled by how dark it was, almost too dim to see clearly, and wondered if asari vision was tuned to a different part of the spectrum than human eyes. It lent the room an ominous feel.

Nonetheless, trees, bushes, and even a smattering of flowers flourished in the weak light. Through the breaks in the canopy, Shepard could see balconies and alcoves clinging to the walls above. The path they followed up to the audience chamber proper wound through the gardens, with benches cleverly positioned every so often along the way to allow for respite and impromptu meetings among the various dignitaries of the Citadel.

"I like it," Alenko said, as they passed by a fountain with an almost Italian feel. "It's very soothing up here. Peaceful."

"Right now, sure, but check out these stairs," Williams countered. "These are great defensive positions. Anyone planning to storm the Council is in for a rough time."

He glanced at her. "I don't know who would be foolish enough to try. They've have to get through the Citadel defenses first, and I don't think anyone's ever made it past."

She nodded, acknowledging the point.

Shepard shook her head. She wasn't much for parade garbage even when her nerves weren't wound up tighter than a fifty-pound spring. "It's pretty, but this is so ostentatious. Almost like they're trying to impress or intimidate the hell out of anyone long before they meet the actual members of the Council."

At last, the final staircase came into view, with Captain Anderson pacing restlessly before it.

"You're late," he said, without preamble. "The ambassador's already with the Council. Come on."

They hurried after him. Udina's strident voice reached them long before they got to the top of the stair. "This Council cannot allow the attack against Eden Prime, against humanity, to stand unopposed and uncensured!"

"You do not instruct this Council, Ambassador Udina." The asari councilor's lips thinned into a sharp line. "As you have been reminded twice today already."

Udina calmed himself, but lost no resolve. "You have the evidence sitting before you. Saren is guilty of this most heinous crime. He is sworn to protect the galaxy, yet he brings an illegal AI army down upon our very soil?"

The ambassador was pointing now, to emphasize his point, up to a high platform at the Council's right. Shepard followed his finger and, with a sinking heart, saw a larger-than-life holocomm of Saren Arterius glaring down at the assembly. Her eyes met Anderson's briefly. Clearly, this was unanticipated.

"The C-Sec findings were inconclusive," the councilor continued with fading patience.

"You have eyewitness testimony that Saren shot Nihlus in the back of the head," Udina argued.

"Yes." The turian councilor's voice was very dry. "I don't think the testimony of a terrorized dock worker, who is also evidently a thief, holds much water against the word of a spectre."

"Why would I have shot Nihlus?" Saren interjected. "We do the same work, and moreover, Nihlus was my protégé years ago, and a friend. Your argument is senseless. The geth surely have their own reasons for wanting the Prothean communications device."

Shepard figured if Saren could interrupt the proceedings, so could she. She stepped forward without hesitation. "We never mentioned what the artifact did. How could you know unless you were there?"

The turian stared at her with open contempt. "You must be Commander Shepard. Impulsive, like all of your kind. No, commander, I know the nature of the beacon you so conveniently destroyed because Nihlus' case files passed to me upon his death. I read the reports from Eden Prime."

"The beacon blew up on its own," she shot back, tightly.

"Because you couldn't resist the urge to play with it." Saren sneered. "Monkeys, all of you. Humanity's not ready to join the Council. You're not even ready to join the spectres."

Udina slammed his hand on the banister. "That's not his decision!"

"The matter of Shepard's induction to the ranks of the spectres is not material to this hearing," the asari councilor replied mildly. "If this is all the evidence you have to present-"

"Wait," Anderson said. Shepard threw him a desperate look, knowing exactly what he had in mind and exactly how unbalanced it would make her appear.

Saren focused on him like a laser.

"Anderson," he hissed. "I might have known you'd be involved when humans attempt to slander me."

Udina grimaced. Shepard was merely confused. Behind her, Williams and Alenko shuffled, equally baffled. The councilor, however, ignored the jibe. "You have something further to add, Captain?"

"Yes." He cleared his throat. "There is the matter of Commander Shepard's vision."

"Am I expected to defend myself against _dreams_, now?" Saren laughed, but there was no humor in it. His beady eyes bore through Shepard, the sheer magnitude of his hatred making her skin crawl, but she didn't let it show on her face.

"Calm yourself, spectre." The asari's gaze returned to Anderson. "Captain, I'm sure you can appreciate that we cannot admit testimony of this nature into these proceedings."

"This wasn't a fever dream. This is data from the Prothean beacon, imprinted upon the commander's mind. It was a warning. We would be wise to heed it."

"A warning." The turian councilor was dubious. "Against what? Commander?"

Shepard cleared her throat. Her voice sounded loud in the room. "I don't know, sir. The Protheans were… under attack. Entire worlds were falling to this… enemy. It's all a jumble."

He made a kind of dismissive noise, shaking his head at the asari councilor. She nodded, the slightest of movements, and glanced at the salarian councilor. It was obvious that they'd worked together a long time, probably long enough to agree on nearly everything. "Commander, do you have anything further to add?"

"No." Shepard only just kept herself from spitting the words. "It's clear you've already made up your minds."

"Very well. This Council finds there is not sufficient evidence to merit further investigation. Your request to have Saren Arterius barred from the spectres is denied. The subject of Commander Shepard's status will be raised at a future hearing." She entered a command to her terminal. "These proceedings are closed."

"I'm pleased to see that justice was served," Saren said, supercilious.

Shepard's glare as he disconnected was solid ice, but she held her tongue. The Council was sufficiently annoyed with them already. Anderson put his hand on her shoulder. "We need to regroup."

"Sir-"

"Not here." He motioned towards the end of the platform. The four Alliance, accompanied by Ambassador Udina, made their way to one of the alcoves Shepard passed earlier. She sank down on the bench and massaged her temples- if her head hurt before, it was positively throbbing now- while Udina laid into Anderson.

"This is your fault." When Udina frowned, his whole body joined in, eyebrows angled, shoulders back, foot tapping the ground. "I never should have allowed you into this audience. Your history with Saren tainted everything."

"That was twenty years ago," Anderson said, but there was no fight in his words. He looked defeated.

"What happened twenty years ago?" Lieutenant Alenko's brow furrowed.

Anderson sighed, folding his arms over his chest. "I was assigned on a mission with Saren, to investigate a terrorist threat in the Skyllian Verge. It went bad- real bad. There were a lot of casualties, and most of them unnecessary. He set it up to look like my mistake."

"The Council upheld Saren's actions," Udina stated stiffly.

"I know you and I don't always see eye-to-eye, ambassador." Anderson jabbed his finger towards the shorter man. "But you've been around. You know what Saren is. He's vicious. Sometimes casualties are unavoidable, but he doesn't even try. He likes the violence and the killing. Saren's exactly the kind of recruit who looks like a model soldier at first, but gets Cat 6'd inside five years. _If _he doesn't end up in the brig first."

Williams scowled. "Hard to see how a bastard like that winds up as a spectre, sir."

"Can everyone just shut up for a minute?"

Everyone turned to stare at Shepard. She pinched the bridge of her nose. "Look, the history lesson is lovely, but we need to focus. Chief, the whole point of the spectres is that they're a shadow operation. It's pretty clear the Council uses them to circumvent their own laws. That's practically Saren's M.O. Ambassador- I know we're not giving you the best material to work with, but it's your job to make the Council help us. We need you to keep working all the angles."

Udina pursed his lips. "And what, exactly, will you be doing, commander?"

She met his glare steadily. "We are going to find you the evidence you need to knock Saren's pointy ass the hell out of the spectre ranks. The more you can do to soften the ground, the easier it'll be."

"You're not familiar with the Citadel or C-Sec." The ambassador snorted. "You can't have the faintest idea where to start."

Shepard didn't miss a beat. "Then I'll ask someone who does. Garrus Vakarian is the C-Sec officer in charge of this investigation. He has doubts regarding Saren's innocence."

Anderson stroked his chin. "There's not even a small chance C-Sec is going to allow you to see him, if you waltz into their office and ask."

"Harkin," the ambassador said suddenly. "He knows everything that moves in C-Sec."

"No good. He got thrown out a month ago." Captain Anderson didn't veil his disgust. "Drinking on the job, and that was just his latest offense. Drugs, getting aggressive with detainees, bribery, you name it."

"Guys like that are like roaches," Alenko reasoned. "They survive by knowing every nook and cranny of their environment, and they never let their information get out of date. I bet he'll still have a good idea where to find your C-Sec detective, commander."

"Find Harkin and we find Vakarian. It beats no plan at all." Shepard stood. "And it's not too hard to guess where a drunken washed-up cop might choose to spend his time."

Udina wrinkled his nose as if such notions were beneath him. "I've got a mess to clean up. If you'll excuse me, Captain, Commander."

They watched him stalk away, before Shepard turned to Anderson and sighed. "Sir, you know how much I respect you, but you should have told us about your history with Saren before the hearing."

He didn't deny it. "I know Saren. This attack is just the beginning. He wants to exterminate us, and I don't trust Udina to understand that. Without the Council's acknowledgment of his actions, not even Earth will be safe."

"Do we really need the Council?" Williams wondered. "I mean, we're still sovereign in Alliance space. Why can't we go after Saren on our own?"

"It's not that simple." Anderson shook his head. "We don't have the military might to defy the Council and withstand their reprisal. Just look at what's happened to the batarians. But we also have something the Council wants- a thirst to expand, even into unstable regions they've long wanted brought to heel. It's a delicate dance of power. We can't upset it, but we can't allow Saren's attack to stand, either."

Shepard had all the political analysis she could stand for one day. "It's getting late, sir. I'm going to suggest we all get some sleep, and I'll have my team tackle the Harkin problem first thing tomorrow."

"I agree. You're free to duke it out on the _Normandy_, or there's bunk space available at the Alliance post near our dock."

"Aye aye, sir." Shepard saluted.

Anderson grunted. "As you were."

He ambled off toward the elevator, while Shepard lowered herself back onto the bench and tilted her head back until she was staring at the ceiling. "The dock worker had no reason to make that story up, and there's no way he or the geth got the jump on a spectre. It has to be Saren."

"I caught a news vid while we were waiting," Alenko said abruptly. There was an uncustomary coldness in his tone. "Current estimates place the initial death toll in the thousands."

"Initial?" Williams was confused.

"There's still some of those… things loose. They're calling them husks."

"No excuse can justify this." At the time of the battle, Shepard was completely focused on completing her mission and the survival of her team. As it sank in, however, her rage was growing, nursed in her belly like a bed of banked coals, hot and sullen. "I don't care who or what he is. We're going to nail Saren's ass to the wall and god help anyone who tries to get in our way."

Williams gave her a caricature of a grin. "That is an order, ma'am, I can gladly say I'll follow."

/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\

When the clock rolled over to three a.m, Gunnery Chief Ashley Marie Williams, formerly a platoon guide of the 212th marine guard, currently assigned to the _SSV Normandy_, running on six hours of sleep spread over the last two days, was hiding in a toilet in the Alliance barracks aboard the Citadel.

She had her knees drawn up to her chin to hide her feet from the gap under the stall door, the furthest from the entrance. A few soldiers, half-asleep, had stumbled in to use the facilities over the course of the two hours she'd been there, but so far she remained undetected. That was good. Let everyone think she was sound asleep in her bunk. God knew the commander had all but fallen into hers. Williams would swear she was out before her head hit the pillow.

It made her angry. The chief was stationed on Eden Prime for nearly a year. It was starting to feel almost like home. She knew the local stores, the people who owned them. She knew the kids who lived on base. She drank in some of the same bars as those dockworkers whose bodies they stepped over so casually as they crossed the port. _Nobody _should be able to sleep right now. The world shouldn't just keep on going. The only backup they received- the only help the Alliance could be bothered to send- shouldn't be snoring in a rack like nothing ever happened.

Williams bit down on her hand to stifle a sob. The images just wouldn't stop coming, no matter how much will she exerted trying to shut them down. There was so much fire the sky turned red, and the smoke rolled so thick around them that she could hardly make out her unit as they died all around her. It blew up her nose, made her cough, and it carried a stench of blood so strong she retched. Here and there geth lanterns lit the world like lighthouses, cutting through the fog, zeroing in on anything still moving. She _crawled _her way out, through the grass and bodies and parts of bodies, trying not to think too hard about how the muddy the ground became, or the nature of the warm mush that met her hand in the dark.

A shudder ran through her as her back remembered the shots, _one two_, hitting her as she finally got off her knees and ran. They were twin bruises there now, each as large as her spread hand and ugly as a tempest. The way her heart stopped as the impact made her stumble, certain the next would come through her brains. The adrenaline as hundreds of hours of drills bypassed her fear and took hold of her body, rolling her over and aiming her gun. The drones peppered her face with shrapnel when they exploded, micro-cuts that stung in the shower earlier, and now, as the tears she was trying with all her might to suppress leaked out anyway.

"Stop it," she whispered. "Stop it- damn it."

God, what would her father think if he could see her now? He always praised her for being the bravest and steadiest of his brood of daughters. She never cried at anything. That was her place- to be the rock for her little sisters and later her mother, no matter what life threw at them, when her father couldn't be there. Even when he died she kept a firm grip on her grief, so they had someone to lean on.

Her first space posting, finally. Williams had to shake her head. It was a far more bitter pill than she ever imagined. She'd earned it twelve times over, she _knew _she had, but it took a tragedy and an absolute travesty to get anyone to notice. It shouldn't _be _like that. And even now the second officer of her ship didn't think she belonged, Williams saw it when the commander looked at her. Confirmed it by her patronizing attempts to empathize. Pity, mixed with a little confusion and a little exasperation, at having been saddled with the stupid groundside grunt on her elite warship. _Probably looked up my dossier first thing, saw the names, made the connections. Just like everyone else._

And now what were they doing? Cooling their heels, playing at galactic politics on a glacial Citadel schedule, while the man responsible for destroying her comrades-in-arms and her adopted home ran loose, plotting his next move. _What if he hits another colony while we're sitting around? What if he's gathering more allies and ships for his fleet? Every moment we waste here he gets a little more ready. And there's NOTHING I can do about it._

3:30 now. Soon, the barracks would start waking up. The bathroom would be flooded with people waiting for the showers, getting ready for the day. She knew she had to leave before that happened. But she was exhausted, physically, emotionally, and her legs didn't want to unfold and carry her out of there. Her face wasn't ready to erect the façade again, her mind unprepared to assume its armor. The thought came, fearful. _I don't know how much longer I can keep this up. _

_But if I don't, it's all over. I'll be stuck groundside forever. Hell- they'll probably send me back to Earth and stick me in some office somewhere, where I won't snap and get anyone hurt. Shepard would probably give the order herself._

So Gunnery Chief Williams took a deep breath, set her feet on the floor, splashed some water on her face, and ventured out in search of a clean uniform. Just like nothing ever happened at all.


	9. Chapter 9

Shepard's boots slapped against the smooth, almost plastic material that served as pavement in the Presidium. The commander grew up on stations. It was unusual for them to obey any planetside conventions like day or night, yet apparently it pleased the aliens to pretend their highbrow ring had a sun. It was "dawn" now, the holographic sky tinged pink with scattered clouds. Hardly anyone else was up and about. That suited her just fine. Fewer obstacles to her morning jog.

She liked to run. It cleared her head, let her think. Some days it was almost like a meditation. This morning, it gave her a necessary silence and privacy for an unenviable task.

_Dear Mr. and Mrs. Jenkins, I regret to inform you… _

That was the way they always began. It was a careful phrase, conveying the necessary sympathy while abrogating all responsibility. _I regret to inform_, as if she had nothing at all to do with it.

_...that your son, Corporal Richard L. Jenkins, was killed in action during the defense of Eden Prime from an attack of [redacted]. _

Because they'd never let her say the word geth, never mind that every news network on a hundred systems was screaming it.

_Though only under my command a short time, I greatly admired your son's…_

Shepard paused mid-step. What was the proper word? Enthusiasm? No, that was too bright, too light. Stamina? That wasn't really accurate. Ah…

…_commitment to his calling and his fellow soldiers, as did everyone serving alongside him. To the very last his loyalty to the Alliance stands as a lesson to us all. He died attempting to turn the tide against a terrible enemy, for the sake of the innocent citizens of one of our finest colonies. _

She hated doing these things. They went out of style in favor of visitations, for a time, in the mid-twenty first century, but it was found that some surviving kin found the formality a comfort. These days they did both. Every time she had to write one, she felt like a fraud. The words the letters should include but never did were _"I'm sorry. We should have done more." _Prepared him more, watched him more, protected him more. Why the hell had she put him in the front, anyway? Because she thought she could cover him better from the rear? That turned out brilliantly.

_You have our most sincere condolences on your loss. It is our hope that, in time, you will be left with pride in your son's dedication and accomplishments. Richard will be deeply missed by us all._

It was too bland. She rounded a corner and side-skipped out of the way of a pair of highly confused turians. She just hadn't known Jenkins very long. It was hard to fill the gaps with those important personal touches, what he liked to do, what was important in his life. Alenko would know, but she hated to ask, as hard as he was taking the loss.

She didn't quite know what to make of the lieutenant. Off the battlefield he was all calm, thoughtful, sometimes to the point of intensity, and there was none of the swagger or boasting Shepard would expect of a career marine. There was nothing about him that suggested any talent for violence. Yet he fought cleanly, expertly even, with professionalism rather than malice. Even Williams' jabs at his commitment didn't get under his skin. It was both confusing and admirable.

Her feet carried her back to where she started, the tunnel leading down to the Citadel space delegated for Alliance use, interrupting her thoughts. Time for a quick shower to get the sweat off, then Harkin. Work never ended.

Thirty minutes later found her in front of a terminal in the small library gracing the outpost. It was one of those times when she could see the appeal of becoming a spectre. Somewhere, there had to be a database tabulating every resident on the Citadel, how to contact them, and where they lived. Shepard didn't have that. She had a sorry collection of Alliance intel and public registries. For the hell of it, because even bastards got lucky sometimes, she tried Vakarian first. Not much came back. There was an entry on the C-Sec staff list, a recent article about the black market trade in organs, and something that strongly resembled a personal extranet site hosting a rather bizarre collection of editorial rants and amateur philosophy.

Harkin, worm that he was, cleaned his name from most of her databases, though she found plenty of news articles and vids discussing his many disgraces. If anything Anderson lowballed it. Harkin wouldn't have lasted a week in her command, no matter who intervened. Twenty years of this was inexcusable.

Shepard kept at it for several hours before throwing her datapad down in disgust, with only a handful of notes to show for it. "This man is a bloody awful ghost."

"What's that, commander?" Williams came up behind her and lay a hand on the back of her chair. "Someone told us you'd been holed up in here for ages."

"For all the good it's done me." She sat back and thumped the datapad again.

Alenko, who followed Williams into the room, winced. "You really shouldn't do that, ma'am. That model breaks easy. It's a subpar board made somewhere out in Volus space-"

"You know," Shepard said, "There are times when I wish for a good, old-fashioned notebook and pencil."

He hid a smile by glancing away. He had a nice smile, all warmth and understatement. She found a similar expression tugging at her own mouth.

Williams, as usual, pressed the issue. "So what now, ma'am?"

"Now we do things the hard way." She stood and stretched. "Suit up. I don't want to be caught with our asses hanging out if we run into trouble."

It only took three tries to figure out the transportation system. Citadel geometry was nothing if not confusing, based on the centripetal gravity of the station, and the array of five long arms. Shepard was determined to at least try getting through to C-Sec before beginning an exhaustive search on foot. The Citadel Security Academy served both as a training ground for new recruits, and the headquarters for all C-Sec operations in this ward. The marines attracted more than a few suspicious glances as they made their way to central processing.

"Can I help you?" The asari manning the desk gave them a very flat look over the top of her terminal. C-Sec uniforms weren't all that different from Alliance digs, though they favored black and gray over black and blue. Hers was crisply pressed, almost to a fault, and the insignia on her sleeve gleamed with polish.

Shepard was direct, but courteous. "We need to see Officer Vakarian at his earliest convenience."

"I'm sorry, but our detectives don't take orders from Alliance soldiers." Her polite smile had all the warmth of interstellar space. "I can make an appointment, but our detectives are very busy people. I'm sure you understand."

"I have new information concerning his most recent investigation that I've been asked to pass along by my superiors." Less a white lie and more a spin on the truth. Technically, the Council's ruling was both new and relevant.

"If you're referring to the investigation into Spectre Arterius' activities, that file has been closed by direct order of the Executor. We have no further need of far-fetched leads."

Williams muttered something. Shepard shot her a warning glance. "If we could just leave him a message-"

"I'm sorry, but if you have no further business with C-Sec, I must ask you to step aside," the asari interrupted, firmly. "There's a line forming."

"Right." Shepard shoved away from the counter, not concealing her irritation very well. The squad wandered out into the carport, away from the bustle of the office, while she fumed.

"Well, that was useless," Alenko observed at last.

"No shit." Shepard tapped her fingers against her pistol and tried to think of what to try next. If she could avoid it, she really didn't want to stumble from one seedy bar to the next searching for a drunk ex-cop, and she didn't have the first idea where to start looking for Vakarian himself. "Maybe we can-"

"Excuse me," said a voice behind them. "Are you… are you Commander Shepard?"

She turned, brow furrowed. A hefty blonde kid in a C-Sec uniform was standing in the middle of the lot, staring at her with a mix of excitement and awe. She could feel a blush creep up her neck. _Oh god, not again. _

"That's me," she answered tersely. "What do you want?"

"Wow," he enthused. "I had no idea you were on the Citadel. I saw the memorial on Akuze- they have a whole section on you! It's a miracle you were able to survive that."

Alenko wasn't able to swallow a laugh. She gave him a death stare. He cleared his throat. "Looks like you have a fan, ma'am."

"I'm Officer Lang." He held out his hand, which she shook. "Sorry, you probably get this kind of thing a lot, but you're a real inspiration to those of us fighting in the trenches. What brings you to C-Sec?"

She started to make some vague excuse, but was suddenly struck by an idea. "I'm looking for Officer Vakarian. It's critical to resolving what happened on Eden Prime, but C-Sec is blocking me. I don't suppose you could tell me how to get in touch?"

"Vakarian? Name rings a bell. Detective, right?" Lang shook his head regretfully. "Sorry, I can't help you there. I'm in enforcement. We don't cross paths with investigation that much."

Well, it was worth a shot. "Thanks, anyway."

"What about a former officer named Harkin?" Alenko asked suddenly. "We've been told he might be keeping tabs on Vakarian."

"Harkin keeps tabs on everyone." Lang rolled his eyes, his contempt clear. "He's got his sticky fingers in every division. If I had to guess, he's holed up at that new club up in the ward, Chora's Den. Rumor had it he was tight with the owner right before his ass landed on the sidewalk."

Shepard blinked. "Thanks. That's actually very helpful. Here I thought I was going to have to just start crashing clubs at random."

"Anything to get those bastards who burned down Eden Prime." There was real rancor in his voice.

She raised an eyebrow. "You're from the colonies?"

Lang shook his head. "No, but I've been on the Citadel almost a year now. Life is fragile out here. And word has it a spectre might be involved? Someone needs to put those guys in their place."

"You don't get along with the spectres."

"Most of us in C-Sec, the Executor especially, don't like the way they're allowed to take a free pass on the law, that's all. They do some good, for sure, but you got to ask yourself if two wrongs make a right."

"I'll let you get going, Officer." Shepard nodded. "And thanks again."

"No problem." He actually saluted before heading into the office. That gave her pause.

Williams was staring at her. She turned to face her. "What?"

"You really don't get it, do you." The chief's voice was laced with disbelief.

Shepard was lost. "Get what?"

"You're Commander Shepard. Every human from here all the way back to Earth watched the interview you gave after Akuze. It was primetime, for god's sake. And they broadcast the medal ceremony too. I was training in the outer planets, they rounded all of us up and sat us down in the mess to watch. You're a damned icon of human resilience, ma'am, and that's a fact. There wasn't a single soldier in my unit who didn't want to be you that day."

"I never asked to be a symbol of anything," she spat back, more harshly than she intended.

"With all due respect, ma'am, I don't think it matters whether you asked." Williams held herself at attention.

Shepard rubbed her temple. "Let's just get to this club, find Harkin, and figure out where the hell our turian detective ran off to."

"Right." Alenko had his omnitool up and was scrolling through a map of the ward. "It's at the far end, past the markets. We probably want to take a taxi."

The ride over was short and uneventful. Even outside the club, the music was loud, the bass streaming through the metal and up through their boots.

The entrance zipped upwards at a touch of the pad, greeting them with the sight of a central bar topped by a ring of poledancers, with tables and bored-looking businessmen thronging the walls. Williams made a sound of mixed contempt and infuriation. Alenko appeared mildly surprised.

Shepard, for her part, was bored. "Shall we?"

"I guess I can see why people come here," Alenko said, at last. "It has a nice… view."

"You might want to roll your tongue back into your mouth before you trip on it, LT." Williams shook her head. "I don't believe it. We travel a million light years from humanity's home, and what do we find? A bar full of half-naked women shaking their asses for drooling men."

"What, you don't think they're here because of the food?" Alenko jabbed back, lightly.

"God. You're all the same." Williams turned to the commander. "Isn't this awful?"

"I don't know. I used to come to places like this a lot," Shepard answered on auto-pilot, distracted. She did manage to find a picture of Harkin on an archived copy of the C-Sec extranet staff page, and she was busy scanning the room for a matching face. "I don't see our mark."

"What?" Williams was floored. "Why?"

Shepard ignored her and approached the bar. She showed the picture on her omnitool to the bartender, who needed a little persuasion to give it a good look. The girl eventually confirmed that Harkin was a regular. Almost guilty after her initial rudeness, she also mentioned that if they were willing to wait a bit, he usually came in mid-afternoon. So they found a table to settle in.

Williams was on her immediately. "Ok, Commander, you can't think I'm just going to let that one go."

Shepard rolled her eyes. "You're a marine. You can't tell me you haven't been to your share of strip joints."

"Not if I can help it. Besides, that's not really what you said." She leaned forward and nudged Alenko. "C'mon. We won't tell, will we, L.T.?"

Alenko didn't seem to know what to make of the situation. He held up his hands in a surrender gesture. "I'm staying out of this one."

"Fine, if it'll make you quiet." Shepard sat back and sighed. "When I first started in spec ops- well, nothing really prepares you for what that is like. This galaxy is full of some terrible shit. There are worse ways to forget than finding a dive bar and watching pretty girls defy gravity after you get back from one of those runs."

Williams snickered, but it was short-lived as Shepard failed to pick up on the joke. "Oh, come on, ma'am. Seriously?"

"Seriously. Hell, I met my ex-fiance in a strip joint." It was true. It wasn't that different from this one, actually, if you ignored the asari dancers and the turian patrons.

Williams blinked. "What?"

"He was a grad student at Mars University. Geology. I was a young jarhead struggling to finish night school between deployments so I could enlist in officer training. Where the hell else were we likely to meet?"

"That's…" The chief stared, mouth ajar. "Brilliant, actually."

"Live and learn, kid." She looked away, suddenly vaguely embarrassed. Whatever reaction Alenko was busily concealing behind his own casual indifference, it didn't seem approving. "Do me a favor, Williams, and go buy us something to drink so we don't look like armed bums. We're getting a lot of stares."

Then, as the girl shot off, she called, "Non-alcoholic. We're on duty." Shepard sat back. "God, she's like a puppy, isn't she?"

"If puppies could shoot as well as her, we'd all be out of a job." He managed a half-smile. "Though I didn't really think you'd be the one handing out hook-up tips to the newbie."

"Pretty poor tip. He left me three weeks before what would have been our wedding day." Shepard folded her arms and sat back, rueful. "I'm losing my touch. It usually takes a few drinks to get that story out of me."

"Rough memory?" Alenko asked.

"Dodged bullet." She snorted. "It's been five years. I wasn't upset, not really, even then- just pissed as hell that he thought that was a good time to make my life that much harder."

"That long ago, huh?" Williams returned, clutching a bottle in each hand and one tucked into her elbow. She caught Shepard's look. "Don't worry, Commander, it's root beer. Promise."

Shepard sniffed at hers and found this to be true. She took a long sip. It wasn't her favorite. "Harkin had better get his ass in here soon."

Williams knocked the top off her bottle and took a long draw. "You can't just leave us hanging."

"You can't just leave us hanging…?" Shepard prompted.

"You can't just leave us hanging, _ma'am_." Williams leaned forward. "What happened?"

"I can and I will." Shepard took another sip.

"Aww, Commander-"

Alenko, who was a bit quicker on the uptake, gave her his best are-you-stupid look. His root beer was untouched. "Five years ago was Akuze, Chief. What do you think happened?"

Williams was suddenly abashed. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to-"

Shepard waved her off. "It's fine. You know, they took me back to Arcturus for debrief, and that jackass couldn't even be bothered to come off-world? He sent me a vid message about how upset _he _was. And I still stayed with him for another six months." She shook her head in disgust. "Young people are fucking stupid. No offense. I got him back, though."

"How's that?" Alenko asked.

She grinned, with just a touch of evil in the look. "His buddies had already laid out the credits for his bachelor party, so they decided to re-brand it a freedom party and go anyway. I showed up an hour before they got to the club and paid off the girls to leave them alone. They were… sympathetic. I actually ended dating one of them for awhile, kind of a rebound thing." Shepard cleared her throat. "Anyway, the boys were stuck with the cover charge, the drink minimum, and absolutely no action for the night."

"He breaks your heart, you ruin his evening. Seems like a fair trade." His skepticism showed through his sarcasm.

"Fair, maybe not, but satisfying- hell yes." Just then, a man started ambling his way through the light crowd, angling for a back table. Shepard got to her feet. "I think that may be our disgraced officer."

She nodded in Harkin's direction. Alenko woke from his boredom and narrowed his eyes, evaluating. "That's him alright."

"Showtime." Shepard stood and adjusted her armor.

Harkin chose a table to himself, in the corner of the bar, where he could see everything and few people could make out his face. Shepard didn't bother with pleasantries. "You're Harkin? From C-Sec?"

He didn't even try to disguise the appreciative scan of her body in its close-fit hard-suit. "A woman like you can call me anything she likes. Why don't you sit down awhile, doll, let me buy you a drink."

"Spare me." She let her hand stray to the pistol holstered at her hip, but didn't draw it. "We're looking for a turian detective, Garrus Vakarian."

"Who's we?" He was scowling now.

"I'm Commander Shepard, X.O. of the _Normandy_ under Captain Anderson, here on the behalf of the Systems Alliance."

"Anderson?" To their surprise, Harkin started to laugh. "Priceless, him sending his wind up soldier girl to do his job. The man's washed-up. I don't suppose he let you in on his little secret, princess?"

"Captain Anderson's a good soldier," she corrected pointedly. "And I don't have time for this crap. Where's Vakarian?"

"Anderson and Garrus. Hah. Failed spectre working with a white knight who thinks he can still change the world. It's perfect." Harkin faked a contented sigh. "I might just cry."

Shepard was merely confused, and losing patience fast. "What the hell are you talking about?"

"I'm talking about how your captain used to be a human spectre, very hush-hush, and screwed up a mission so badly they kicked him out. And Garrus is a vigilante nutcase you'd be better off without."

"That's impossible."

"Ask him yourself. I bet Anderson's so caught up in his honor that he'll tell you the whole thing."

Alenko interjected, with a modicum of diplomacy, "Nobody asked your opinion, or for a history lesson. We just need to know where to find the turian. I'm sure you know what's what in C-Sec."

"I do know." Harkin glowered. "You know they were keeping a file on me? Bastards. Tracking my every little move. Everyone knows that a bribe here or a blind eye there greases the wheels so everything keeps running smoothly. Everyone knows sometimes you need to get a little rough with the scum to get your answers."

Shepard leaned forward on the table. "You need to learn to take some responsibility for yourself."

"Save it, sweetheart. This ain't a church." He sipped at his beer.

"It's Commander. And I'm done humoring you. Tell us where Vakarian is." Harkin hesitated, and Shepard leaned further towards him. "Location. Now. Or you'll be picking up your teeth with a cup."

There was a quick glance from her face to her collection of weaponry, and Harkin got a few shades paler. "I might have heard he was going around the med clinic, down in the wards. The doc there managed to get on Saren's bad side. Garrus never knows when to let anything go."

"Thank you." Shepard gave him a polite smile with a razor's edge. "You've been very helpful."

On the elevator down to the main thoroughfare, Williams started up her banter again. "Yeesh, Commander, ye of little patience."

"I've got plenty of patience," Shepard protested. "I have patience for my crew, patience for my family, patience for people who need our help, hell, I even occasionally have patience for the persistently stupid. I just don't waste any of it on rats like Harkin."

"Would you really have knocked his teeth out?"

She found herself smiling at the door. "No. Probably."

"I can see it now," Alenko said. He cleared his throat and took on a formalized tone. "'Alliance soldiers detained after strip-club brawl. Sources close to the Council say one of the perpetrators was a spectre candidate and decorated special forces officer. Is this proof that humans are far from ready for the responsibilities of galactic citizenship? Tune in at eleven!'"

Williams laughed. Shepard pretended to glare. "Why do I take you anywhere?"

Alenko returned it with an expression of perfect innocence. "Because, ma'am, you occasionally find it easier to collect teeth once the previous owners have been blasted into the nearest wall."

"Oh, right. Silly me."

The elevator doors opened on a long corridor out to the commons. It was deserted. As the commander stepped into the hall, suddenly every warning bell in her head started going off at full volume. Her whole body tensed.

Behind her, Alenko and Williams continued their joking, but they sounded far away. Shepard's concentration was running in overdrive now, her blood loud in her ears, as her eyes swept the scene at triple speed, every detail magnified. There was a glint from a doorway up ahead.

"Commander?" Alenko asked, confused.

"Move!" She flung herself flat against the wall just as the glint became a rifle barrel and the unseen assailant started spraying bullets toward the elevator.

Williams cursed as the two marines scrambled for defensive positions amid the uncanny warbled thumps of bullets impacting a suit shield. Shepard crouched down, drawing her pistol- there was no way of getting at her own rifle, on her back, without presenting a larger target- and returned fire. A fist-sized blue ball of light went flying by her shoulder, knocking the gunman out of his doorway and leaving him to dangle helplessly in the air.

Shepard didn't have a chance to take advantage of it, however, as at that same moment a second enemy emerged from the other side of the hall with a clean shot at her. Immediately, she tucked her head to her chest and covered it with her arms, to protect her brain and maximize shield efficiency. A bullet pinged off her right hand painfully.

Another ball of light sent him crashing into the doorframe, and she managed to get off a shot. Assault rifle fire from the elevator finished the job. The floating man, now dead, hit the floor with finality. Then there was only silence, marred by the hiss of cooling weapons and the beeps of suit shields coming back online.

Alenko held out his hand to haul her up. "Are you alright, ma'am?"

"Never better." She surveyed the scene with disbelief. They were all breathing heavily. She glanced over both of them. "Anyone hurt? Williams?"

"No, ma'am." The marine was clutching her rifle in a death grip, the angry red streak of a grazing wound gracing one cheek. "How did you know they were coming?"

"Light glinting off a barrel." Shepard rubbed her hand. It was going to ache like nobody's business for the next few days, but it didn't feel like anything was broken. The Alliance didn't scrimp on their shield generators.

She approached one of the fallen men and rolled him over with her boot. There was no insignia and his armor was basic, the kind any enthusiast could buy at a reputable sporting goods shop. The serial number was filed off his weapon. "Saren's men. Have to be."

"No transmitters." Alenko was scanning the man with his omnitool, collecting as much data as possible. "Think Harkin tipped them off?"

"He'd have to be damn fast about it." Not fifteen minutes had passed since they left Chora's Den. "But anything's possible."

Footsteps clattered off the metal flooring. Two C-Sec officers rounded the corner with pistols drawn.

Shepard looked back at Williams. "Call Anderson. Now."

"Aye aye, ma'am." She turned away and immediately opened a channel on her comm.

The officers trained their weapons on the trio. "Hands in the air!"

Shepard did as he said, though she couldn't stop the fierce, grim smile that crept onto her face.

Alenko, also raising his hands, looked at her sidelong. "Ma'am?"

"This is good, lieutenant."

"I don't follow."

She returned the glance, smile growing. "If Saren wants us dead, it means we're getting close to something that stings."


	10. Chapter 10

Naturally, the C-Sec officers, both turian, were skeptical of any story three Alliance marines could produce to explain why they'd just shot two men dead in a well-traveled thoroughfare. Shepard gritted her teeth and allowed her squad to be handcuffed, after the officers relented just enough to allow Williams to finish speaking with Anderson. He agreed to meet them at central processing. He was not amused.

"What now, commander?" Alenko was calm enough, considering, though he shifted uncomfortably in the seat of the cruiser, wincing at the lights flashing through the glass.

Williams was decidedly less sanguine. "I am not getting locked up in some alien prison."

"Easy there, chief." Shepard leaned her head back against the window. "Nobody's getting locked up. We were defending ourselves. As soon as they dig up the security footage from the hall, we'll be released."

"Assuming that Saren's men didn't disable the cams before the assault," Alenko amended darkly.

Shepard didn't allow any trace of how much that conjecture troubled her show on her face. "Anderson will sort it out."

He closed his eyes and leaned back, expression pinched and drawn. Shepard looked away and tried to think. She was more worried now about being stuck in custody, relieved of their weapons and armor, than she was regarding the actual charges. Spectres had the run of the Citadel. In a C-Sec holding cell, they'd be sitting ducks if Saren decided to try again.

They were dragged through the Academy- Shepard swore she saw the damned asari receptionist smirk in their direction- and unceremoniously dumped in a small processing room with a badly programmed VI doing its best to force them to submit to various security scans. Another officer, human, came to collect a statement. Then they were left alone. The whole process took maybe thirty minutes, and there was still no sign of Anderson.

Shepard blew out a breath as the hatch shut behind the woman, while Alenko, free of the cuffs at last, instantly began fishing in a suit pocket. She raised an eyebrow as he withdrew a bottle of pills and down two without hesitation.

"Migraine," he said shortly. "It's probably too late to stop it, but what the hell."

"Stress?"

He jerked his head sharply, no, and elaborated with sarcasm. "I have a dark energy amplification device hardwired into my brain. There are some side effects."

"A biotic in my unit said they got rid of all the side effects." Williams was skeptical.

"Lucky me, I'm old enough to have an L2, not an L3." He propped himself up against the wall and covered his eyes with his palm. "Please don't talk so loud, I'm begging you."

"I wasn't-" Williams began. Alenko visibly flinched. She lowered her voice to a whisper. "Well, I wasn't talking loud."

Shepard turned her attention back to the VI, which was smiling cheerfully into space from its corner. Like the tour guides, it was programmed to resemble an asari, albeit one half as tall as real life. "How long can they keep us here?"

"Citadel Security is authorized to detain suspects for up to thirty-six terran hours after arrest without filing formal charges," the VI explained readily.

"Have there been any charges filed?"

"You are still being processed. Once your records are fully established within Citadel Security databases, I will be able to provide more current information."

"Great." Shepard groaned and took a seat on the bench running the length of one wall. Williams paced the room nervously, her hand straying to the empty holster of her confiscated weapon at regular intervals. In his corner, Alenko was now biting his lip so hard she half expected his teeth to go straight through it, every muscle in his face clenched. It hurt just to look at him. Her knowledge of the Citadel justice code was sketchy at best. Certainly she could pump the VI for information, but at the moment she preferred to believe it would be unnecessary.

Time passed into endless waiting. A hard suit was an incredible advantage in a fight, but after hours of sitting in it, Shepard felt like her ass was going to fall off. Williams was stretched out on the length of the bench, hands folded over her stomach, dozing. Alenko was a ball, his head drawn up against his knees with his face hidden in his lap. Every so often he banged his forehead against his legs. She wondered if it helped. It had been at least an hour since anyone spoke. Even the damned VI eventually timed out, dissipating from the air.

Shepard had almost nodded off herself when the hatch split open abruptly and Captain Anderson strode into their tiny stronghold. She ripped off a lazy salute from her seat. "Hello, sir."

"Shepard," he replied evenly. "I forget the part of my orders that told you to gun men down in the street."

"They shot at us first, sir. I think they were Saren's men." She explained the generic armaments and Alenko's theory that Harkin sold them out. "It seemed best to cooperate with C-Sec instead of adding to the body count."

He didn't disagree. Anderson surveyed the room once more, speculatively. "Nicer digs than what they have on Mars, I'd imagine."

Shepard's jaw dropped momentarily before she could collect herself. His face remained stern, but his eyes laughed as they caught hers.

"My mother has a big mouth," she managed at last. Damn it, she'd been seventeen. The records were sealed. How in the hell did Anderson find out about that?

"Huh?" Williams shuffled back into the land of the waking.

"Nothing," Shepard said, a touch too quickly, before Anderson could take up the thread of conversation. She changed the subject. "So, Captain, can we blow this popsicle stand, or what?"

"It took a personal call from Udina to the Executor, but yes. The video footage confirms your story, but they wanted to hold you for questioning all the same." His lips pursed, any trace of earlier amusement gone.

She frowned. "You think Saren's leaning on them."

"I hope whatever intel you got from Harkin was worth it."

"I know where to go next," Shepard confirmed. "There's a doctor down in the wards who attracted some of Saren's interest, which in turn got the attention of our C-Sec detective. We're getting warmer."

"Better turn up the heat," he growled. "Saren's playing for keeps."

"I was just shot at, sir," she said soberly. "I'm not the one you need to convince."

Williams rubbed the sand out of her eyes. "Let's get our gear and go find this med clinic, ma'am. Sooner is better."

She spared a glance for Alenko, who managed to stagger to his feet, but was still obviously in bad shape. Shepard didn't suffer from migraines herself, but she'd heard other people's descriptions. Everything from knives stabbing into the skull to unbearable, unrelievable pressure, vision fading or flashing, nausea, lasting hours or even days. "I don't think the lieutenant is in any condition to go anywhere."

As if to confirm it, Alenko attempted to stumble forward a step, and promptly emptied the contents of his stomach onto the cheap plastic tiles. Anderson didn't seem surprised or even perturbed. "I'll get Alenko back to home base. You and the chief go find this clinic. We need to move fast."

She saluted. "Aye, sir."

They collected their guns from a reluctant C-Sec staffer and saw themselves out. Thankfully for their search, though likely not for the health of the residents, there was only one medical clinic listed in the area. The head physician was given as Dr. Chloe Michel, a smiling, slender young woman with a cap of red hair and lively green eyes.

It wasn't far, so the two women set out at a walk. It was very late now, by the Citadel clock, and being this close to the Presidium most of the lights were dimmed and few people were about. Williams jumped at every noise along the way. Shepard supposed several days of almost getting killed could do that to a person, if you weren't used to it. "Try to relax."

"Sorry, ma'am." Williams swallowed. "I don't like this, stumbling around in the dark."

Shepard didn't know if she was talking about the investigation or their present circumstances- probably both. "I don't like it either, but we have to keep a hold of ourselves, understand? Otherwise you're just as likely to shoot some ward rat as an enemy."

"I know what to shoot at, ma'am," the chief replied, more than a little chill in her tone.

"Good." Shepard paused in front of a locked hatch and checked her maps. "I think this is it."

They regarded the darkened clinic warily. For the hell of it, Shepard banged on the door. There was no response. She turned her attention towards the control panel.

"Are you sure that's allowed?" Williams asked as Shepard pried off the cover.

"Surely not," she replied absently, examining the tangle of wires beneath. "Do you have any omnigel on you?"

"Yeah. The suit's a bitch to maintain without it." She produced a tube and tossed it to Shepard, who began squeezing a generous supply over the innards. "No offense, but what good does that do, ma'am?"

"It creates a weak conductive sheet across the entire system. Since most locks work in a physical sense by opening circuits…" She stuck out her tongue in concentration, the tip between her lips, and spread it carefully among the nest of wires. Her suit would ground her sufficiently for this task, though she wouldn't much care to test it on anything stronger than a lock.

Williams seized her wrist in her hand, hissing, "Don't you think we've been arrested enough for one day?"

Shepard stared at her coldly. Her voice was very low as she spoke. "Touch me again, Chief. I dare you."

Williams' grip gradually slackened. "I'm- I'm sorry, ma'am, just- _breaking into a building_, really?"

"I'm not going to harm anything. I'll even scoop the goop out of the control panel when I'm done." The hatch zipped open onto an abandoned room. "Shall we?"

The chief cursed under her breath, but followed Shepard into the depths of the clinic. The flashlights mounted on their rifles gave the room an eerie cast, illuminating scant circles that served more to deepen the shadows than reveal their surroundings. Directly ahead was a wrap-around half wall, avoiding some structural complication of the station, and separating them from the beds and medical scanners partitioned off against the far wall. Dispensers for medicines, bandages, and other supplies hung neatly off the walls.

Shepard made a beeline for the terminal sitting closed in the corner of the room. Williams swept her light over the beds, searching for occupants, while they waited for it to warm up. "I don't like this, ma'am."

"So you've said." The commander didn't permit her flagging patience to govern her response. "C'mon, Chief. Where's your sense of adventure?"

She stared. "You're nothing like what I expected."

Shepard blew out an exasperated sigh. "It's like I told you- I'm no icon. I'm just me. Sorry if that doesn't quite match whatever ridiculous notions the vids put in your head."

Williams muttered something. Shepard leaned over the console, tapping in a few commands. "I can't hear you."

The marine turned to face her directly. "I said get over yourself, _ma'am_."

"Go to hell."

"My entire platoon is dead. I'd be dead, if you hadn't shown up. Saren would have gotten away with it, too, without the evidence you found." She took a step closer. "In my book, that makes you a hero. And now we're on the brink of war, and we _need _a big goddamn hero. So, with all due respect, commander- I don't care _what _you think."

Shepard laughed. "I'm just a soldier, Ash- can I call you Ash? I'm good at my job. Hell, I'm goddamn _amazing _at my job, but I'm pretty bad at everything else. If you're looking for a hero I can suggest a few. It sure as shit isn't me."

Williams made no reply, except to turn her back and resume monitoring the perimeter. Shepard turned back to the terminal. So far, there was little to suggest any misdoing in the clinic. No unusual supply shipments, no notable names on the patient log. She found a password cracking package on the extranet, downloaded it to her omnitool, and set to work on the patient files.

After a moment, she said, "You're one to talk."

"Excuse me?" Williams raised an eyebrow over her shoulder.

"You've got the biggest chip on your shoulder I've ever seen. I know not all of it's Eden Prime. What's your problem?"

"No problem." She rolled her shoulders and turned back to her duty. "The Alliance never treats us Williams as well as we treat them, that's all. My dad used to say a Williams has to be twice as good as anyone else to get half the recognition. He served the Alliance until he died but never got promoted past serviceman, third class. How's that for justice?"

Shepard glanced back at the young woman, who was holding herself quite stiffly. _This has nothing to do with the Alliance. _"I'm sorry for your loss."

Williams swallowed. "Thank you, ma'am."

Shepard bit her lip, hesitating, and checked the progress of her password cracker. So far, it wasn't having much luck. Slowly, she said, "My dad was almost spaced, when I was a teenager. It left him with a lot of problems. Lately he's… he's not doing very well. It was always just my mom and him and me, and he kind of held the whole thing together while she was off chasing rank. I don't know what's going to happen if…"

She trailed off, and cleared her throat. "Sorry, you don't want to hear this."

"No, it's ok."

It might have been her imagination, but the chief sounded slightly less aggressive. In any case, at that moment her bootlegged program beeped disappointment, and she thumped her hand against the station irritably. "Damn it. Worthless piece of garbage code- I can't get into these patient files. They're all protected."

"Check the deletions log," Williams suggested.

"Good thinking." She tapped a few more commands. "Hey, this is interesting. Most of the data's been scrubbed, but she treated someone for a gunshot wound not five days ago. No name given. Dr. Michel needed a file to feed the scanners, but it's like she didn't want any record of this patient to exist afterwards."

"Think Saren shot them?"

"Probably not personally, but I'll take any lead we can get at this point." Shepard copied the relevant data, what little of it there was, and shut down the terminal. "Let's get out of here."

"Aye to that, ma'am." Chief Williams led the way out, and didn't seem to relax until Shepard wiped clean the inside of the door control box and replaced the lid. "What now?"

"Now, we go get a few hours' sleep and be waiting here tomorrow when Dr. Michel opens the doors," Shepard replied grimly. "I have a lot of questions for her."

They took an auto-pilot taxi back to their billet. Small frigates like the Normandy only had enough sleeping pods to house half to a third of the crew at a time. That worked just fine in deep space, when the ship was kept running in shifts, but less well in port. Shepard found the racks to be standard-issue- narrow, outfitted with sheet, pillow, and blanket. There was a laundry at the door for trading out soiled uniforms alongside a rack for body armor. She crawled out of her hard suit and found her bed, but sleep proved elusive, in spite of the long day

She lay staring at the bunk above her, idly spinning her dog tags on one finger, an old habit all too many C.O.s had tried to break her of. There was too much happening, too quickly. Eden Prime was scarcely behind them. Saren was altogether too far in front. Somehow, she had to find a way to bring those two points together.

The visions granted her by the Prothean beacon also haunted the darker corners of her mind. She thought she'd seen it all, between the Blitz, Akuze, and her classified service following. This was something else altogether. She had only one word for it.

Annihilation.

Shepard shuddered. There was still a hope that the Council was correct, that what she'd seen was imaginary or irrelevant, but in her bones she knew this to be a pleasing lie. What she saw was real. It meant something. Not being able to figure out why the Protheans would have left that for someone to find was going to drive her crazier than the images themselves. Was it a warning, like Anderson told the Council? A final cry for help? Or merely some kind of premonition or war of their own?

_And I'll drive myself crazy if I don't get any sleep,_ she chided her thoughts, lightly. The tags slipped back over her head and she rolled on her side, shutting her eyes resolutely against the Prothean nightmares.

And when she heard, two bunks over, Gunnery Chief Ashley Williams crying herself to sleep as quietly as possible, into her pillow, she was kind enough not to notice. She rather felt they'd had enough togetherness for one night.


	11. Chapter 11

Morning saw a shower, much-welcomed, and a quick breakfast in the Alliance mess. Human food was apparently still a novelty to the station. Shepard opted for some cold cereal, sans milk, given that the milk in question was a shade of pale blue. Her red hair was in its customary knot behind her head, but there was no time to dry it properly, and every so often an uncomfortable bead of cold water would roll down the back of her shirt.

Williams still looked a little red around the eyes when Shepard met her ground team outside the mess. Alenko was similarly exhausted. She gave him a careful look. "Feeling better, lieutenant?"

"I'm sorry about that, ma'am." He seemed mortified, almost, holding his hands behind his back and not quite meeting her eyes.

"Does this happen often?" she inquired.

Alenko shook his head. "No. I'm on two medications for it, one I take every day and the emergency one. Usually, so long as I take the second when the aura starts, they manage to knock it down enough that I can still function. This one came up fast."

_Or because you weren't able to take your pills due to your hands being cuffed_, she thought, recalling him flinching away from the lights of the C-Sec squad car. Her brow furrowed. "Aura?"

"It's a precursor symptom causing visual and sensory interference." His face reddened slightly.

"What kind of interference?"

"I get spots in my vision and my hands start to tingle," he elaborated reluctantly. He hastily added, "It won't be a problem, ma'am, I promise."

She left it at that, which seemed to relieve him. Anderson clearly didn't find his medical problems a danger to their mission, and that was good enough for Shepard, seeing as he had his pick of crew for his ship. She'd just keep an eye out for any warning signs in the future.

They all woke up a bit more as they made the brisk walk back to the clinic. Though taxis were plentiful and convenient, it continually surprised her how close to the wards the Alliance outpost truly was. A part of Shepard wondered, idly, what it would be like to be stationed here, at the heart of everything, without the isolation of the Alliance or the perimeter of her ship. The thought was odd and rather surprising. Her duty as a marine was to protect humanity, at all costs and against all enemies, which had included some of the aliens who lived here. But as time went on it was harder to think of them as aliens instead of simply people. Alliance space was more tied up in the galactic community, economically, militarily, culturally, every passing year.

Williams apparently had similar thoughts. "Do you think it's expensive to live here?"

"Probably." Shepard shrugged.

Alenko shuddered. "Too many lights and too much noise. No thanks."

They reached the med clinic. The inside was lit up and the hatch blinked a cheerful green, indicating the lock was disengaged. Shepard stole a glance at the time. It was fully thirty minutes before the clinic was scheduled to open. "Anyone want to bet Dr. Michel is an early riser?"

"With our luck?" Williams chuckled. "No."

"I don't think so either, commander." Alenko pointed. "Look. Burns on the lock. Somebody wired it open."

"Crap." Shepard drew her pistol and edged over to the window. It was hard to make out what was going on, but she saw several figures crowded together past some frosted glass. "Hold your fire for my order."

There was a chorus of "aye, aye ma'ams". Shepard took a breath and slapped the forced panel. The door sprang open.

It took her only a split second to evaluate the scene. Four thugs, human, surrounded a woman in lab garb who was stark white with terror and babbling aimlessly. "I didn't tell anyone, I swear!"

Garrus Vakarian spotted Shepard and put a finger to his mouth, a plea for silence. He was crouched against the half wall, out of sight. Meanwhile the ringleader shoved his illegally modified submachine gun in Dr. Michel's face. "Good. Fist wants us to make sure it stays that way."

Shepard trained her weapon on his head. The movement caught the eye of one of his friends, who cried a warning, and suddenly all three henchmen were more interested in her than their intimidation racket. The leader grabbed the doctor and pressed her to his chest in one smooth movement. "Stop right there or she dies."

Her weapon never wavered. "Let her go and maybe you'll live."

She thought she saw movement out of the corner of her eye, but she didn't dare betray Vakarian by looking left. Beside her, Alenko and Williams each picked their targets, posing a credible threat to the leader's friends.

"You must think I'm some kind of-" he started to reply, but the jab was cut short by half his head exploding in a cloud of gore. The doctor stumbled back, retching and spattered in brains, and it was a good thing, too. At that same moment, bullets filled the air as the men left behind immediately panicked.

Shepard dove for cover. "Take them out!"

It wasn't much of a contest. Gangs like these liked to think they knew gun fighting, but their street-skills weren't up to the standards of military operatives, particularly not those who had gone through ICT's harsh education, and neither was their hardware. It was almost boring, popping up over the barrier, firing off a few rounds, crouching again while her marines did the same.

She cautiously rose as the final man fell, shaking dust out of her hair. Their assailants hit the walls and ceiling far more often than their targets.

"You killed him!" The doctor didn't know whether to sound grateful or appalled. She also wasn't speaking to Shepard.

Officer Vakarian inclined his head towards the both of them.

Shepard holstered her gun. "Nice shot."

"A clean kill." If turians could smile, this one was doing so. "Sometimes you get lucky."

The doctor seemed to have made up her mind. "I don't know what I would have done if you hadn't come when you did. Fire fights in a _hospital. _Can you imagine!"

"Who sent them?" Shepard demanded. Her squad quietly checked the bodies as they spoke, a grim if monotonous task.

"It was Fist," the answer came immediately. If the doctor harbored any doubts, they didn't show. "This must have been about that quarian. It couldn't be anything else."

"What quarian?"

"She came in here in a bad way. Shot, and not in one of the nice places. Her infection was terrifying." Michel shook her head, disapproving. "She never told me her name, just got her treatment and left. She was playing some kind of hunch on the geth. I didn't ask many questions."

Alenko got her attention. "They're clean, ma'am. Almost too clean, like the men we saw before."

"Thanks, lieutenant." Shepard brushed aside the attack on the quarian and pressed the lead. "Who's Fist, and how did he get involved with this?"

"He's an agent for the Shadow Broker. The quarian was looking to sell some information in exchange for protection, so I put her in touch." Dr. Michel paled. "Oh, god, you don't think they got to her too?"

"Fist doesn't work for the Broker anymore." Vakarian was more satisfied than angry. "He's Saren's man now."

The doctor's brow furrowed. "Fist betrayed the Shadow Broker? That's stupid, even for him. Nobody crosses the Broker. He knows everything that moves in the galaxy."

Shepard caught Vakarian's eye. "This quarian must have information that proves Saren's a traitor. Why else come down this hard?"

"Exactly." He gave her a grim little smile. "We've got him, as long as we can find her before he does."

"Damn it." Time was always their enemy. "Where do we start?"

"With Fist. We hauled in a krogan mercenary, name of Wrex, for making threats against him. He's been consistently insistent that he intends to make Fist a corpse. If anyone will know where to find him…"

"Right." Shepard glanced back at her squad. "Chief, I need you to report back to Captain Anderson, let him know what's going on. If we're going after Saren's agent I want someone to know where we went. Vakarian, you're with us."

Williams saluted, concealing her disappointment well. She was a good gun, but Shepard was still feeling out her judgment- and when push came to shove, she might well need Alenko's technical expertise more than raw firepower to get close to Fist. Taking the order without protest was, however, a big point in her favor.

Shepard looked back at Dr. Michel.

"Those men would have killed you," she stated flatly.

The doctor swallowed and nodded. "Yes. I think, in the future, I'll stick to medicine. I can't thank you enough."

Vakarian checked his heat sink. "I've wanted to take down this bastard for years. Commander, please, lead the way."

When they arrived at C-Sec, the turian immediately led them past reception and into the warrens of the Academy. Shepard couldn't resist tossing a smug look at the asari as they strode by. They found the krogan in an interrogation room, grinning evilly at a very put-out Citadel Security officer.

The woman tossed Vakarian a look of relief as they entered. "Sir, the suspect is being very… recalcitrant."

"Is that so?" He glanced at Shepard, and she found her own mouth curving in sardonic amusement. "Officer, you're dismissed. We'll take it from here."

She saluted and hurried off like she couldn't put enough space between her and the krogan.

Shepard looked over her shoulder at Alenko. "Watch the door."

"Aye aye, ma'am." He took up station in the hall. Shepard ducked inside.

The turian settled down in the vacated chair. His eyes flicked over the file. "Really, Wrex. Is frightening a wet-behind-the-ears kid like that necessary?"

Shepard shut the door behind them and took up station nearby, crossing her arms over her chest and leaning casually against the wall. "I take it you two are acquainted?"

"I can't say the same for you," the krogan- Wrex- growled, his voice an octave lower than a typical human's. His nose tasted the air. "But you smell like a warrior."

She chuckled. "I'm Commander Shepard, of the _SSV Normandy_. I hear we're looking for the same man."

"Wrex is a bounty hunter," Vakarian interjected dismissively. "He's usually smart enough to steer clear of business while he's on my station."

The krogan folded his arms as well, unconcerned. "I take the jobs as they come. Fist is a nasty piece of work, but he's… _civilized._"

"He has information critical to my mission. I need to know where I can find him." Shepard didn't have any time to waste on this banter.

"I've heard of you, Shepard." He looked her up and down. "We're both warriors here together, so I'll give you fair warning. I'm going to kill Fist. He's mine."

"I don't give a rat's ass what you do with him, so long as I get to ask my questions first." Not entirely true, but enough to pass. Wrex seemed to feel some kind of camaraderie between them and she was willing to milk that if it got her what she needed.

Officer Vakarian folded his hands on the desk. "I could have you charged for that, you know. Making threats to Fist is one thing, making them in front of a C-Sec officer while being recorded is another."

Wrex just laughed. "It's not a threat, turian. It's a promise."

"Do you _want _me to arrest you?"

The krogan shoved forward. "I want you to try."

Despite the gravity of the situation, Shepard found she couldn't hold in a laugh. Both men glanced at her, startled. She clamped a hand over her mouth but a final giggle slipped out anyway. "I'm sorry… sorry, I know all this posturing must be _very important._ But I've got a quarian to catch, so if you don't mind…?"

Vakarian was chagrined. Wrex stared at her for the better part of thirty seconds, and for a moment Shepard worried she'd inadvertently started a fight in a small room with a one-ton enemy species known for their prowess in close-range combat. But she lifted her chin and held her ground.

The he burst out laughing. "Human- you, I like. You've got more courage than the half of these sniveling C-Sec weasels. Sure, I can tell you where to find Fist."

She allowed a small smile. "I'm listening."

"He owns Chora's Den. He built himself a nice little office behind the place, where he can oversee the business personally. Spends most of his time there."

"Shit. No wonder he was able to put together an assassination squad so quickly after we left Harkin."

"A couple of guys in an alley is like a love note compared to what he's going to have waiting for you at his place," Wrex said confidently. "You should take me with you."

"I'll end up in prison myself if I spring another officer's suspect," Vakarian protested. "It's how this crap mill works. I'll have to process your release, and that takes more time than we've got."

"We've got this," Shepard asserted, pulling her rifle and checking over it. "Vakarian, you're with me."

A slight smile. "Call me Garrus."

"Garrus then." She jerked her head towards Alenko as they made their exit. "We're headed back to the lounge. Be ready. Our informant thinks Fist is going to have quite the welcoming party."

Garrus drove them across the ward in a Citadel Security car, though he nixed the lights and sirens in favor of getting a jump on Fist. He might be expecting them, but there was no reason to let him know the moment they arrived.

"Power's off," Alenko stated grimly as they approached the door, weapons drawn. "He's shut the place down. It's going to be dark, and there were chairs and tables everywhere."

"Watch your fire and stay together." She nodded to the powered down door panel. "Think you can do something about that?"

He pried off the cover and pulled a few wires. After a moment, the panel lit up green, and he fell back into place.

Shepard took a breath and raised her free hand. "On three. One… two… "

She slapped the panel and the hatch sprang open. The club looked alien without the bass and the flashing lights, and without the haze of cigarette smoke hanging over everything, but what immediately caught her attention were the 20-odd guns pointed directly at them. "Oh, shit-"

As one, they opened fire. Shepard's shield was down a half-second before she hit cover, leaving a nice pockmark on ceramic plates that made up the chest of her suit. She'd feel that one later, but right now, there were thirty pounds of adrenaline coursing through her veins and she doubted she would have felt an amputation. A quick glance verified that Alenko and Garrus had taken up residence behind the till across from her. Neither that nor the overturned table shielding her offered much resistance to bullets, but at least the enemy couldn't aim for them directly.

There was only one thing to do. Shepard unclipped a grenade from her belt, pulled the pin, and sent it sailing towards the back of the room. She tucked her head into her knees. Alenko, who was familiar with Alliance tactics and half-expecting the maneuver, followed suit. Garrus, however, was distracted and failed to notice the throw. He was peering cautiously over the top of the till when all hell broke loose.

The concussive blast knocked her into the wall despite her precautions. Suddenly the room was filled with smoke and screaming. Garrus lay stunned on the floor, blinking stars out of his eyes, but he was low enough to ground to keep cover from the debris. Ears ringing, she used hand-and-arm signals to order Alenko to move up alongside her. They pressed into the club.

The wounded were for the most part too surprised and in pain to offer more than a token resistance,, at best. The men were so crowded into the small room that her single explosive found a lot of targets. It was gruesome, but not any worse than what she'd seen before. They advanced steadily, with a quick burst of fire here and there to settle the last of the resistance.

Shepard jumped over the bar for some cover as they reached the end of the room. She nodded to a hatch, and whispered above the groans of the injured and dying. "Think that leads to the office?"

"Has to. It's the only door other than the entrance." Alenko peered over the top of the bar, similarly ignoring the battlefield horrors. "On your order, commander."

She looked over her shoulder. "Check and see if you can find Garrus."

He slunk off, keeping low, while she kept her gun trained on the hatch in case of reinforcements. A minute later Alenko returned, a half-concussed turian in tow.

Garrus' expression was half-amused and half-annoyed. "Next time, a little warning, if you please."

"What, and warn them too?" She nodded to the hatch. "Lieutenant, if you please."

They took up position and Alenko sent a gentle wave of force towards the hatch, just enough to trigger the pad. It slid open smoothly. Beyond it, a small cluster of men in overalls crouched behind a few hastily-assembled crates, clutching pistols.

"They look like dock workers," Garrus remarked.

"Oh, for fuck's sake." Shepard raised herself up over the bar a bit. "You going to use those guns, or are they just for show?"

"Stay back!" one of them called. "Stay back or I'll shoot!"

She spared an ironic and only slightly heightened glance at Fists' men, strewn all around them, then decided to take a chance and hopped the bar. She stalked towards them without a trace of fear. "I killed at least thirty body guards to get this far. What do you suppose I'll do to you?"

Shepard was now standing at point-blank range from the man who spoke up, looking down at him, her expression promising the wrath of god if he didn't make the right choice, and quickly. His eyes wavered between her and the tangled bodies, and gulped. "Shit. We're not getting paid enough for this."

"Go on, get out of here. Go back to your families." She jerked her head towards the door. The dock workers scattered like roaches.

Garrus watched them go, blinking. "I'd never have thought of that."

"Shooting people isn't always the answer." Alenko looked around. "I wonder where all the staff went."

"Hopefully, our friend Fist just sent them home for the day." She listened briefly at the next door. It sounded like someone was shuffling around in the next room. Shepard lowered her voice and nodded towards it. "Ready?"

There were nods all around. She tagged the hatch and slipped into the room.

A swarthy blonde raised his rifle immediately and held down the trigger until he overwhelmed the heatsink. Shepard simply waited out the fire behind a wall partitioning the space. _Someone's panicked._

The weapon began to click and beep in irritation. Still, the man kept trying to fire. She rolled her eyes and slapped it out of his hand. His eyes went wide as she leveled her own gun.

"You're Fist?" Shepard asked mildly.

"Shit." He couldn't focus. His eyes kept darting between the three of them.

"Your men are dead or dying," she continued pleasantly. The muted moans from the bar underlined her point. "That was a lot of effort to go to for a simple conversation."

"I'm not an information broker anymore," he said. "I can't help you."

This she ignored. "I'm looking for a quarian. She came to you for protection, so you should remember her well."

"I don't know what you're talking about." The answer was a little too fast, a little too practiced.

Alenko glanced at her. "He's lying."

She altered the angle of her gun. "If you're fond of functional knees, I suggest you start talking."

"I told you-"

"Lieutenant, shoot him." Shepard turned away. She knew he'd never do it, not for real, not to an unarmed civilian no matter how vile, but he understood what she was doing and took aim, finger twitching but not actually depressing the trigger. Garrus, she felt, would have shot Fist without hesitation. That kind of coldness had its own value but this wasn't the place.

The gesture was enough. The blood drained from Fist's face in a single gush. "Wait! Wait, ok, maybe I do know something. She'd only deal with the Shadow Broker directly."

"Nobody ever meets the Broker." Garrus frowned.

"I _know_. Even I don't his true identity." Fist sighed. "But she didn't know that, see."

"You vile little worm." Shepard rounded on him. "She came to you for help, probably paid you for it, and you set her up."

He didn't look at her. She grabbed a fistful of his shirt and jerked him towards her. "Where's the meeting, hmm?"

When he didn't answer, she shook him, hard. "Location. Now."

"An alley in the upper wards, not far from here. If you hurry you might still catch them."

Shepard dropped him unceremoniously on the floor. Fist rubbed his neck, where his collar dug into his flesh, and shot them a death glare.

Garrus nodded towards him. "What should we do about him?"

She frowned. There was no satisfactory solution here- no time for an arrest, and she wasn't about to commit murder, either. Not over scum like Fist. So she crouched on the floor, her face inches from him, and snarled, "I _never_ want to see you again. Is that clear? You get yourself the hell off this station, and away from the company of good people."

He was sullen, but she could tell he wasn't lying. At this point he was too afraid of them to do anything but comply. "Don't worry. You won't see me again."

Alenko caught her eye. "We need to run, ma'am."

"Right." She left Fist to make his plans and hightailed it out of the bar. Garrus, who knew the station best, took the lead.

"This way," he called, as they entered the twisty back halls of the wards. The marines followed at his heels. He dropped his voice as they turned down a long alley and saw a lone quarian standing, apprehensively, up ahead. "There she is."

Shepard crouched behind a garbage collector, figuring how to play this. But before she could act, a turian entered the scene.

"Where's Fist?" the quarian demanded. She had a contralto voice, pleasant, but overlaid by the electronic amplification of her helmet. Quarians never left their envirosuits, at least not in public, though Shepard didn't know why. Despite the suit, the woman seemed very young. Maybe because of the amount of naivety evidenced along this chase, or maybe it was simply how alone she looked in the middle of the alley.

The turian ran his hand over her shoulder and down towards her torso. "He'll be here."

She slapped the hand away. "No way. The deal is off."

The turian just laughed. A number of other men of various species stepped out of the shadows. The quarian took a hesitant step back, looking around wildly, and then tried to run for it.

Shepard took that as her cue. "Open fire!"

They took the thugs by surprise. Shepard took out the turian first, with no small amount of satisfaction as her gun wiped the smarmy expression from his face. It was over in a matter of minutes. Without cover, without coordination, the young woman's assailants dropped like flies.

As the dust settled, she was surprised to see the quarian crouched against a wall, with a serviceable shotgun settled grimly in her hands and every sign of having used it.

She looked up at Shepard as the commander sauntered over. The purple-tinted mask hid her face, but two canted eyes shown out like stars. "Thank you. I owe you my life."

"I'm just glad we got here in time." Shepard was surprised by her own response. Protecting civilians was, in a way, the entirety of her job, and it was the right thing to do, but they were still strangers. This one, she felt oddly good about. Maybe it was just her age. Girl still applied as readily as woman.

"Me too." The eye lights flickered. A blink? "But… not that I'm looking a gift horse in the mouth, but who _are _you?"

"I'm Commander Shepard, with the Alliance. I've been tracking Saren since Eden Prime. My investigation led me to you."

Comprehension dawned. "You're the one from the vids."

Her brow furrowed. "What vids?"

Garrus cleared his throat. "Some of the footage from your meeting with the Council leaked to the press. It's been all over the news."

Great. She pushed the unpleasant revelation aside, and refocused. "Why is Saren after you?"

"My name is Tali'Zorah. Tali'Zora nar Rayya. I found some information while trying to complete my pilgrimage that could help your case against Saren."

Alenko glanced around. "Not to interrupt, but this alley isn't secure. I suggest we get somewhere safe before we continue this story."

"Good thinking." Shepard bit her lip. "The ambassador's office. Udina and Anderson need to hear this, too."

Tali'Zorah gulped, audibly, but voiced no objection.

Luckily, both the ambassador and the captain were already in the office when they arrived. Udina rounded on her immediately, purple-faced. "What are _thinking_, Commander? Bodies in the streets? A shoot-out at Chora's Den? Is this how Alliance officers conduct their business nowadays?"

"Shut up," she snapped. Even Anderson was taken aback. "I've been gathering the evidence you wanted. Believe it or not, Saren's associates share his philosophy of ethics."

Udina pointed at the quarian. His voice dripped contempt. "What is… _she _doing here?"

"My name is Tali." Her tone was tight, agitated. She glanced at Shepard.

"She has evidence against Saren. He tried to kill her for it," the commander explained, an edge in her voice. Udina was staring at Tali like she was something the cat dragged in.

Anderson cut in before any more barbs could be exchanged. "Let's hear it."

Tali looked at each of them in turn, nervous and sour. She tapped away at her omnitool. Saren's voice abruptly filled the room. "Eden Prime was a major victory. The beacon has brought us one step closer to finding the conduit."

Udina slapped his fist into his palm. "We've got him!"

But Tali's gaze never left Shepard's as she allowed the recording to play on. A second voice, a woman's, practiced and mellow, joined Saren's. "And one step closer to the return of the reapers."

The recording fell silent. Shepard cleared her throat. "Who the hell was that?"

"I don't recognize the second voice," Udina mused.

"It doesn't matter." For the first time in days, Anderson looked hopeful, and excited. "There's no way the Council can ignore this evidence."

"Wait a minute," Alenko cut in. "I hate to rain on everyone's parade, but it's just a recording. There's no easy way to verify it's not fabricated. Hell, we used to do this kind of thing as a prank, when I was a kid."

"Shit," Shepard cursed, looking over at Anderson. "He's right."

"I wouldn't have offered it if I didn't have proof." Tali was almost offended, a true technophile. "I took this recording from the memory core of a geth unit. I have the core in a secure location."

Anderson was confused. "I thought geth memory cores self-destruct when they go offline. Some kind of fail-safe."

Tali leaned back, something satisfied in her posture. "My people created the geth, Captain. Sometimes, if you're quick, careful, and lucky, small caches of data can be preserved. I tracked this geth for four days, until I could lure it away from its unit and disable it. I wanted to bring back something useful for my pilgrimage, but…" She shrugged. "The flotilla has no need of this kind of data. I'll have to keep looking."

"Pilgrimage?" Shepard asked.

"It's a rite of passage for our people. Going out into the galaxy for the good of the fleet, bringing home something of value, like hardware, or new technology… it's how we become full adults." So, the guess about her age was evidently spot-on.

Alenko was still parsing the information. Slowly, he asked, "What's a reaper? Why does Saren want to bring them back?"

Tali almost laughed. "The geth revere the reapers as gods. They're the ultimate machine. According to their beliefs, they vanished fifty thousand years ago, after purging the galaxy of all organic life."

"That's absurd." Udina shared in her amusement. Even Anderson was entertained.

Shepard, however, felt a cold, hard knot form in her stomach. "It's not."

Now everyone was looking at her. She was too certain to be embarrassed, or doubtful. "I saw it. That's the beacon's warning. This is what happened to the Protheans, it has to be. Everything fits."

"Commander, think about what you're saying." Anderson was concerned.

She returned his look levelly. "I know exactly what I'm saying, sir. And the geth believe Saren can bring them back, using this 'conduit', whatever that is."

"This is all beside the point." Udina seemed pleased, despite everything. "I'll convince the Council to call an emergency session. We'll present this evidence and they will be forced to act."


	12. Chapter 12

Three hours later, Commander Nathaly Shepard was once again standing before the galactic Council in the middle of an argument.

They kept the attendance small this time. It was just her and Udina. Anderson's presence, even in light of the evidence, was ruled a distraction, nor would a quarian add to the cause. Tali'Zorah didn't seem to mind. She surrendered her recording and retrieved the geth memory core without fuss, and was waiting back in Udina's office under the protection of several Alliance marines, including the two under Shepard's command. If Saren wanted another shot at Tali, out of ignorance of recent developments or pure spite, he was in for a challenge.

After some preamble, the ambassador presented the recording with a distinct air of triumph. For her part, Shepard watched the faces of the Council as Saren's voice thundered through the room. The salarian was unreadable, but the turian looked distinctly discomfited, and the asari was pale. When the recording switched to the woman's voice, she jerked as if shot, and swallowed visibly.

The last words died. Udina spoke into the quiet. "There you have it. Proof that Saren led the unprovoked assault on Eden Prime, and is a traitor to his office."

"We've examined the memory core." The turian's mandibles twitched. The admission pained him. "It is uncompromised beyond the geth's own self-destruct protocols. C-Sec experts have verified the recording. The evidence is irrefutable."

"And Saren?" Udina barked.

"Saren Arterius will be stripped of all titles and privileges," the salarian councilor concluded.

Udina wasn't done. "And Eden Prime?"

"Saren is hiding somewhere in the Traverse, with his 'army', such as it is," the turian councilor chided. "He no longer has the rights, privileges, or respect due a spectre of the Citadel. He is no threat-"

"That's not good enough! What's to stop him from attacking our colonies? You must send the fleet to bring him to justice."

"We must do nothing," the turian hissed. "A fleet cannot find one man. Besides, any strong military presence in the Traverse is likely to provoke a war with the Terminus. We won't risk that, not for a handful of colonies."

The ambassador was practically purple. Shepard felt her own indignation slowly turning to rage. She met the turian councilor's eyes. There was a small, sly smile in their beady depths. _We both know that if these were turian colonies, or asari, Saren wouldn't live to see next month._

She took a breath just as Udina opened his mouth to levy another argument. "There is another solution."

"Commander Shepard." The salarian councilor sounded vaguely pleased. That was a surprise. "I understand we have you to thank for these curious revelations. What is your plan?"

Shepard stepped forward and looked from one councilor to the other. "Send me after him."

The turian councilor laughed. "Vigilante justice, now?"

"I'm Alliance- I've got their resources at my back. You won't have to expend your own," she continued steadily, not acknowledging the slight. "I've spent the better part of ten years crawling all over the Traverse, so I know the lay of the land out there. And one person, one ship, seeking a known criminal and nothing more, will not provoke a war."

"There is, however, only one way to deploy you in the interests of the galaxy with all the proper authority to pursue Saren." The salarian's lips pursed.

"That is true," she acknowledged. Shepard was amazed she managed to keep the smug grin off her face. Politics, it turned out, could be fun after all.

"Councilor Tevos," the turian said, "You've been very quiet so far."

The asari raised her head from her podium. She licked her lips. "I recognize the second voice. The woman."

He blinked. Udina and Shepard exchanged a glance.

"Tevos, who is it?" the turian asked. His voice was quieter, gentler, the way you talk to a friend in shock.

"I-" she lowered her head, shook it once, took a breath. Her gaze leveled the turian. "It's Matriarch Benezia. She is a great leader among asari, very progressive, and she has many followers. Her philosophy, her opinions, are very influential on Thessia."

Shepard would bet all the credits in her account that Councilor Tevos was one of these vaunted followers. She was as shaken as if she'd just been told of the death of a family member.

The salarian councilor was puzzled. "Why would an asari matriarch be assisting Saren in these… plans, whatever they are?"

"I don't know." The councilor shook her head again, stricken. "I honestly don't know."

"It doesn't matter." Udina attempted to regain control of the dialogue. "Shepard's plan is a sound one."

The turian sneered. "Of course you would say that."

"It's a win for everyone," Shepard cut in. "You get your rogue spectre, your embarrassment, brought to heel, the Alliance gets to protect its colonies, and Udina gets his human spectre."

"And you, Commander? You have no stake in this?"

"Sir," she began. She paused to compose her thoughts. "Sirs, ma'am, I graduated one of the harshest training programs in the known universe. I have spent most of my adult life undertaking dangerous and secret missions in unlikely places to preserve the peace and safety of this galaxy. I currently serve as the executive officer aboard what may be the most technologically advanced frigate in any fleet, promoted above those exceeding my age and experience."

Shepard met the eyes of each of them in turn. "With all due respect, I have all honors one person needs or indeed knows what to do with. This isn't about ego. I'll find a way to take Saren out regardless. You need this more than me."

Udina was staring at her with something like surprise.

"Well spoken," he said at last.

The councilors exchanged glances. Again, she sensed an advanced degree of unspoken communication. Then, as one, they reached forward and touched their consoles.

"Commander Shepard." Councilor Tevos motioned her forward.

She held herself at attention. Shepard wasn't certain what was appropriate on the galactic stage, but figured it was rarely out of place.

The turian councilor looked like he'd bitten a rotten apple but made no objection as the asari continued. "You will be instated as a member of special tactics and reconnaissance, the strong arm of council authority within our galaxy, with all the ceremony due an appointment of this magnitude. As the first human to receive this honor, I am certain you are aware that the eye of history is upon you."

"Yes, ma'am." Shepard didn't flinch from her scrutiny. "I'll find Saren and shut him down."

"See that you do," she said, and Shepard had never heard anyone more sober in her life. "This session of the Citadel Council is adjourned."

/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\

Shepard didn't remember much of the ride back to the ambassador's office. It was always like this. She was calm and collected in the moment, and everything hit her later, once the urgency was ended. Udina was crowing. She just felt like she was about to be sick.

They burst into the room like a sunrise. Udina was gesticulating wildly and, by that point, incoherently. Shepard slumped into the nearest seat and rubbed her forehead.

Tali'Zorah got to her feet. "What happened?"

"They bought our testimony." Shepard let out a long breath. "Saren's a traitor. Now everybody knows it. They've disbarred him from the spectres."

The statement hung in the air, begging for more information, but she sat back and let it lie.

"And?" Alenko took a step towards her.

She looked up at him without really seeing him. "They're sending me after him. They're making me a spectre."

"Wow," he said. "That's… big."

Williams peered at her. "You look a little green around the gills, ma'am."

"I'm pretty sure I just promised three of the most powerful people in the galaxy that I know the Traverse like the back of my hand, and I would not only find but put down a man with two decades' experience on me, along with his personal robot army, like mad dogs." She paused. "I'm… going to need a minute."

"I think that's probably a natural reaction, ma'am," Alenko stated. She peered at him, but didn't detect any mockery.

Shepard stood and walked over to the balcony, walked a few paces, ran her hand over her hair and took a deep breath. "Ok. So what's next?"

Udina had calmed himself. "We need to get you a ship, supplies, start running down leads."

"Someone needs to find Captain Anderson," Williams added.

"That, too," Udina acknowledged. He was pacing now himself. "Benezia. That's a solid start. If she's really shilling for Saren now, that's big. It could divide the asari."

Alenko frowned. "Maybe that's his goal. Humanity's just the first step."

"If this reaper crap is real, everyone's at risk." Shepard stopped pacing and turned back towards the room, her arms folded over her chest. "Saren's their vanguard. The geth believe it. Matriarch Benezia believes it."

"Machines that wiped out the Protheans, returning to annihilate us?" Tali was skeptical. "All quarians know that synthetic life is a danger, but this is well beyond anything we've considered possible."

"Something killed them," Shepard argued, stubbornly. "They didn't go quietly into the night, the beacon made that damned clear."

"To you." Udina left the statement, and the implications, hanging in the air.

She squared her shoulders. "Damn right to me."

Udina faced her down a moment, before rightly deciding not to pursue it at this time. "Regardless, Benezia might prove more traceable than her associate. A woman like that is going to leave a trail. Unlike Saren, she lives in the public eye."

"I'll get on it." Shepard mostly managed to keep the sarcasm from her voice. It was a good suggestion, but an obvious one, enough so to be vaguely insulting. But it wasn't worth upsetting the precarious balance of the room.

Williams was more than eager for the fight. "When can we go? Into the Traverse, I mean, after Saren?"

She sighed. "I don't know where to go yet, Chief. As soon as I do, I'll let you know."

"There's also the matter of the induction ceremony." Udina rubbed his chin. "It will take the Council's staff a few days to pull things together. We have some time to strategize."

"Well, let's get started."

/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\

As a de facto spectre, even if it wouldn't become official for a few days, Shepard was accorded new resources. One of them was a small room in the depths of the C-Sec academy, no more than a closet, furnished with a desk, two chairs, terminal, and a vid comm. The light flickered periodically.

In the last four hours, she'd become acquainted with the highlights of Benezia's professional history. At nearly a thousand years old, there was a lot of material to cover, even cursorily.

She was sifting through Benezia's ninth century, which promised some leads, when there was a knock on the door. "Come in."

Captain Anderson opened the door and peered around the corner. "Cozy little office you've got here."

"Yes, sir." She finished a bullet point on the infernal datapad and looked up, with a tired smile. It was after one in the morning.

He held up a bag. "Have you eaten?"

She gave it a glance. "No, sir. My stomach's been a bit…"

"Jittery?" He laughed, and took the chair across from her. "I know the feeling."

Anderson set out two styrofoam containers. As he opened them, the smell of garlic and tomato sauce washed over her. "Where the hell did you find spaghetti in this place?"

"It's ravioli," he corrected, and passed her a plastic fork. "Stuffed with cheese instead of beef, because you're a wimp."

Shepard ignored the barb in favor of a mouthful of food. It wasn't like she never ate meat. Rations were rations and she burned too many calories to ignore whatever they chose to serve her. "This is pretty good."

"You have to know where to go on the Citadel. Human food is… a rarity."

They ate for a minute or two in silence. Shepard finally said, "Well, Udina got what he wanted."

"Yes, he did. I wish it hadn't taken Eden Prime, but…" Anderson shrugged. "Any port in a storm. We've needed this in with the Council for a long time."

"Twenty years?" she asked. She couldn't quite bring herself to give voice to Harkin's gossip, not here, not to the captain. But curiosity was eating away at her.

"About that long, yes." His look was penetrating. Then he sighed and sat back. "Who talked?"

"I hate to say it, but Harkin." Shepard bit her lip. "Is it true? I know not all of the spectre appointments are public."

"I was never accepted as a spectre. I failed my candidacy test. Which was overseen by Saren Arterius."

Shepard sat back as well. "What happened?"

"We were pursuing a rogue scientist. He was conducting illegal AI experiments, and the Council was holding the Alliance responsible. We were supposed to capture the scientist, or kill him if that proved impossible."

"I'm guessing things didn't go according to plan."

"No, they did not." Anderson shook his head. "He was hiding in a refinery. We were supposed to sneak in quietly, but Saren had other ideas. He blew the whole place. Most of the workers didn't make it out. The clouds of poisonous gas killed a lot of the civilians- the families, the children- living downwind in the refinery town."

"My god." Shepard was taken aback. Even after Eden Prime, even knowing Anderson as well as she did, the story came as a shock.

"When the dust settled, he blamed me, and the Council swallowed it. Said I tipped off the guards." Anderson snorted. "After that, there was no chance of my becoming a spectre. Hell, it took two goddamn decades for them to even consider another human candidate seriously."

Her voice was quiet, chiding, but understanding as well. "You should have told me, sir."

"I know. I wanted to, but… I'm not proud of this, Shepard. I'm a soldier. This was the ultimate responsibility. I failed." Anderson stared into his lap. "But it showed me who Saren really is. He's a psychopath. And a murderer, and a warmonger. He enjoyed killing all those people. I wish I'd done what was needed twenty years ago, and damn the consequences."

"If we start thinking like that, the Alliance is nothing more than an anarchy. We have to take the orders as they're given, even when they're wrong." She rubbed her forehead. "Sometimes there's no good solution."

"You're one to be lecturing me on following orders." He chuckled.

Shepard had to laugh at that. "You're still sore over that business in the Verge?"

"Until the end of my days, Shepard." He stabbed another piece of pasta and changed the subject. "I'm surprised to find you here, today of all days. I figured you'd be out celebrating."

"There's too much work to be done," she replied, honestly.

He wasn't fooled. "And…?"

"And…" Shepard sighed. "This is political. I didn't earn this, sir, I was just standing in the right place at the right time. Bingham, Silveira, Laine- any of them are just as qualified."

"No, they're not. If they were as good as you, their names would be in the hat." Anderson regarded her steadily. "I'm sure somewhere along the line someone found this false modesty in you charming, but it's time to get over it. You're the face of human strength now."

She folded her arms crossly. "So my email inbox keeps reminding me."

He had to chuckle at that. "My office is getting a lot of requests as well. Mostly from the press, but also a few other people, some not so nice. You have to know it's not going to be like Akuze, Nathaly."

"I know. It's going to be worse." She tried, and failed, to match his humorous tone. In truth, she was dreading the reporters. Their questions would be intrusive, biased, and planned with an agenda in mind. And they wanted to know _everything._ Her childhood, her early service, her joke of a degree, the N7 stuff she wasn't allowed to talk about and didn't want to, anyway. It was a feeding frenzy, and Nathaly Zelena Shepard was the only item on the menu.

He gave her a look. She was exasperated. "I'll handle it, sir. Just because I'm not turning cartwheels doesn't mean I'm not ready. Don't worry about me."

Anderson relaxed a hair. He returned his attention to his food. "This ceremony they're assembling for you is going to be something else. First human and all that. And they also want to make it clear that they're doing something about the geth. Even the people who support Saren don't like the idea of rogue AI."

"I wish they'd make it short and sweet." Shepard speared another ravioli. The sauce was really spectacular. "I already got a visit from some kind of protocol officer. Asari."

He harrumphed. "I know what they're like. All pomp and circumstance."

The terminal blinked. One of the articles she requested finally cleared the system. She hit a key to deactivate the announcement. "She asked me if there was anyone I was expecting. To attend the ceremony. You know, family and friends thing."

"Yeah?"

"It was… I don't know. My dad can't go off world, not with his health problems, and mom is… well, mom. I don't have any friends who are going to come out for this, not on this short notice at the expense of traveling all this way." Shepard snorted with disgust. "I swear to god, Captain, when she looked at me, there was pity in her eyes."

Anderson sighed. "That's not unusual. Not for N7, not for spectres. You know I'm right. We don't have… normal lives."

Ordinarily, she wouldn't have voiced the question, but it was late, and it had been a strange day. "Any regrets, sir?"

"That's a complicated question, Commander."

"Indulge me."

"What do you want me to say? Of course I've thought about it. Hell, Shepard, my wife served me with divorce papers the same day I got the message that I was under consideration for the spectres."

She blinked, surprised. "I didn't know you were married. Mom never mentioned it."

Anderson waved her off. "You were a kid. No reason for her to mention it then, no reason to remember it later. It's a hard life. You don't need me to tell you that. But you find friends- good friends, real friends- who don't care about the shitty schedule, or the risks, and that's your family."

"But you don't ever get a real one."

"It's real enough." He exhaled. "Look, I'm an old man. You're not even twenty-nine. Don't write off the rest of your life because this is what you're doing right now."

"Don't misunderstand me. I want this. Just…" She sighed herself. "When she came and asked me the question, and I didn't have any names to give her… it was like when you come out of the tube at the end of a deployment, right, and everyone around you is kissing and crying, and you've got your duffle bag slung over your shoulder, looking for a cab. It felt like that."

"If you want me to get your mom out here..." It was one part joke, one part threat, and one part serious.

Shepard chuckled. "No, sir. I was just looking for some catharsis, I guess."

"You'll do fine, Shepard. You always do."

"With all due respect, that's what scares me, sir."

That got a laugh. "But I didn't come here to talk politics or philosophy."

"Why did you come here, sir?" She glanced at the now mostly-empty containers. "Other than to make certain the Citadel's newest spectre doesn't faint dead away from hunger."

"I came to tell you that Udina and I found you a ship."

"Oh?" She scraped up the last bit of sauce. "Which ship is that?"

He cleared his throat. "The _Normandy_."

Shepard stared. "No."

"She's the fastest ship in the fleet," Anderson went on steadily, overriding her immediate objection. "And you'll get good use out of her stealth capabilities. You know the crew, you know the hardware, and there's no time to spool you up properly on something new."

"But the _Normandy's _yours." Shepard was aghast. "You got her built. She's barely got the shiny rubbed off-"

"This is how it has to be, commander. Someone's got to stay back here, too, The Council will be happy to wipe their hands of Saren two seconds after you're out of their hair. Tell me I'm wrong."

"Captain, you're no pencil-pusher."

"I do what I have to. Like any good soldier." His tone was at once hard and resigned. "Take good care of her for me."

Shepard met his eyes for a long moment. "She won't get a scratch, sir."


	13. Chapter 13

There was a sharp knock on the door.

Shepard's head jerked up off the table. The datapad stuck to her cheek a moment before sliding off onto the floor with an ominous crunch.

The knock came a second time, even less patient.

"What?" She brushed some of the trash from their meal into the bin and raised her voice. "I mean, come in."

The door slid open and Garrus Vakarian stepped into her makeshift office with a speculative air. The blue markings on his face looked brighter than before- paint, then, not tattoos. He was already wearing a C-Sec hard suit despite the early hour, and he was grinning. The turian fingered the string hanging from the bare lightbulb. "I see the Council spares no expense."

Shepard folded her hands neatly on the desk and tried to blink the tired out. "What can I do for you, detective?"

He tilted his head and read the document left open on her terminal, a property record, backwards through the holographic interface. "Why do you care that Matriarch Benezia bought an apartment in Thessia's capital?"

"It's a long story. I think she might have bought it because-" Shepard rubbed her face. "You know, never mind."

"Congratulations, by the way." Garrus perched on the edge of her desk.

"Yeah." Shepard sat back and looked around the shabby office, noting her two hours of sleep. "It's a real honor."

Garrus snickered. She rolled her eyes. "Why are you _here_?"

"I called Dr. Michel this morning. Just to check in. She was abrupt, and you know that woman is nothing if not wordy."

"You think something's up?"

"I don't know." His mandibles flared. "I've confirmed that Fist has left the station. You really lit a fire under his ass, Commander. But I'm worried all the same. I thought you might want to come along and check it out."

She ran a hand through her hair, which was greasy and falling out of its bun, then looked down at her disheveled uniform. She tucked in her shirt and slipped her dog tags back under collar, and took a final glance around the room before firmly clicking the terminal off. "Lead the way."

/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\

Kaidan Alenko was on his way to breakfast on the lower level of the Presidium. He was tired of eating what passed for food in the mess, and determined it wouldn't do any harm to spend part of his paycheck on a real meal.

It turned out the Alliance diplomatic corps on the Citadel had similar opinions on the palatability of alien cuisine, because there were any number of small, human-owned cafes scattered near the offices of Udina and his staff. People thronged the counters in long lines and crowded the tables and chairs that sprawled from under awnings and out of cubbyholes. He bypassed the early stands in hopes of finding something less crowded.

Alenko always found the Citadel a bizarre experience. It was a space station larger than most cities located in the middle of absolutely nowhere, without planet or star to anchor it, and its residents seemed to have a similar perspective. Out here, it was like nothing else in the galaxy mattered or even occurred, but they thrived on galactic news like a form of entertainment.

The Citadel had its own media, as did all the various races, but in this quarter the ANN was the service of preference, and it blared from every news terminal. Most of the restaurants had at least one screen going. Alenko was beyond sick of hearing reporters drone on about Eden Prime, tired of hearing the death counts and the damage tolls, and even more sick of the wild speculation regarding the geth by people who clearly didn't know what the hell they were talking about.

Their ignorance irritated him. The fact that they barely mentioned the sacrifices of the 212 or Jenkins while making veiled accusations that this was somehow the Alliance's fault, for failing to protect the colony, infuriated him.

The news talked about Shepard a lot, though. From the way they told it, her recent promotion was more important and exciting than the attack, and he knew nobody could be more disgusted by that than Shepard herself. She honestly didn't seem to give a damn about being a spectre aside from the fact that it afforded her more authority and resources to do her job. He admired the hell out of that.

There was a lot he admired about her, if he was being truthful. She was smart, capable, unflappable in a crisis and a superb leader, quite aside from being one of the most instinctual soldiers he'd ever personally met. It was easy to see why ICT scooped her up so quickly after enlistment. Everything about her was honed over the years until it couldn't be any better.

And she didn't seem to care about the fact that he was a biotic, either, taking even the ill-timed headache in stride. He had a love-hate relationship with his implant. Alenko responded particularly well to the L2, better than most of his peers, but he could just sink into the ground and die when it pulled a stunt like it did two days ago. He needed to be reliable, and stable, because nobody thought biotics were either of those things.

On the other hand, Alenko would be cold and buried before he let some re-branded Conatix spin-off within ten miles of his brain again, so they were rather stuck with each other.

He buried the ugly thought and got in line at the café that looked promising. There was no point in considering it. Things could have been worse.

Thirty minutes into this quixotic quest for a decent plate of eggs, he was beginning to devalue taste in favor of speed. The line inched forward. He shuffled impatiently from foot to foot a few times before he noticed and stopped himself.

"Kaidan?" a hesitant voice asked, behind him.

He turned and squinted. "Mat?"

Matsuo Noguchi-Lidstrom, dressed in a suit and holding a briefcase, grinned at him from the sidewalk. "Holy shit."

He came over and clapped Alenko on the shoulder, to muttering from the other people waiting in the line. "I had no idea you were on the Citadel."

"Just the last few days, while my C.O. tried to get the Council to see reason on this synthetic thing. It's been hectic." It was over a year since Alenko last saw him, but Mat never changed, from the way his black hair stood up slightly at the back of his head, to how the heavy frames he favored kept sliding down his nose.

Mat looked him up and down. "I imagine. You were on Eden Prime?"

Alenko frowned. "Yeah."

The man standing behind him jostled him. "Move up or get out of line, I don't have all day!"

Alenko allowed Mat to draw him aside, somewhat reluctantly, over the objections of his stomach. His friend was still talking. "Seriously, you were on Eden Prime? Are you ok?"

_Bodies at the space port. Soldiers on spikes. Jenkins staring unseeing at the sky. _

"Mat," he said, exasperated, forestalling further questions and before his mind could conjure any more memories. "This is my job, remember? I'm fine."

"Yeah, yeah." His expression was rueful. "I know it's been ten years, but it's still hard not to think of you as that pasty kid huddled up in the library at three a.m. because he got a ninety-five instead of a hundred on his diff eq exam."

Alenko had to laugh. "Trust me, it feels a lot longer from this end. How's Alex? And Hadley?"

"Oh, the same." Mat rolled his eyes. "Ranting about how the whole firm's going under because a handful of building projects got put on hold after this invasion, and meanwhile I swear Hadley gets an inch taller every day."

"I hear that's how it goes."

His friend glanced back at the queue, which contrary to all logic seemed to only get longer as the morning dragged on. "Hey, look, I'm horrendously late for work, but let me get you breakfast real quick. There's a place I go to most days, off the main drag."

/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\

The med clinic was open early again. Dr. Michel was on a call when they walked in, pacing nervously before the terminal.

"Yes- No- If you'd just let me-" There was a long pause as someone on the other end spoke low into their omnitool. Dr. Michel swallowed. "I am running a clinic. I need those supplies. You can't just ask me to give them up."

The voice laughed. Dr. Michel looked like she was about to cry. "I see. Well." Another pause, and she got very quiet. "Yes, I understand."

She terminated the call and stared at the floor, muttering to herself in French too soft for Shepard's translator to register.

Garrus strode forward. "Good morning, doctor."

She started and whirled in place. Garrus smiled. Shepard started to say good morning, but a yawn came out instead, so she settled for a wave.

"My apologies, detective, commander, you startled me." The doctor smoothed her hair. "What can I help you with?"

Shepard jerked her chin towards the terminal. "Who were you talking to?"

Michel colored. "Nobody. Nobody important, anyway."

She hustled over to a bed, where a salarian was curled up on his side, and fussed over the IV. Shepard trailed after. "Doctor, seriously, if Fist's leftovers are giving you a hard time-"

"No, Fist is gone." Her smile was tremulous and fleeting. "Thank you again. And congratulations on the new appointment. Is the ceremony going to be very large?"

"I don't really know." Shepard didn't allow Michel to distract her. "You were talking about supplies for your clinic, so I know it's not personal."

Her indignation was immediate. "But it is personal. It's _my _dirty laundry after-"

If anything she blushed harder and closed her mouth.

Garrus pounced on it. "Chloe, come on. You've patched up how many of our cadets? This is me you're talking to."

"Oh, if it will shut you up." Dr. Michel blew out a breath, causing her red bangs to flutter across her forehead. She sat on the edge of an empty cot. "It's something from my past. A job I used to have. Fist stirred up a lot of garbage coming after me."

Shepard crossed her arms. "What kind of garbage?"

"The kind that gets you fired." She pinched the bridge of her nose. "Several years ago, I was working at a different clinic. People would come in, sick people, and I would give them medicines, sometimes other supplies, but I was not supposed to. My coworker found out."

"So your boss let you go. I'm not seeing the scandal, here."

"You don't understand how these things work on the Citadel. These were government supplies. My supervisor did me a kindness in only firing me. I could have lost my privilege to practice on the station." The doctor looked up at them both, expression drawn. "I could still lose my license and this clinic if the reason ever came out."

Garrus made a kind of purring noise. Shepard supposed it was meant to be thoughtful. He put a hand to his chin. "And now somebody wants some more free medical supplies, or they leak the story."

Michel nodded. "That is the essence of it, yes."

Shepard exchanged a glance with the turian. "When?"

"Today. This afternoon, in the market. There is a retailer named Morlan-"

"I know Morlan," Garrus interrupted. He wasn't smiling.

Shepard thought about a moment. This was outside the scope of her responsibility or authority as an Alliance officer, and it was too small for a spectre, though it seemed largely that spectres determined for themselves what was a valuable use of their time. Some obviously miscalculated.

But she liked the doctor, and if she had to stare at another asari news report on Benezia's illustrious life she was going to put her forehead through her desk. "Let us make the delivery."

Michel blinked. "You'd do that?"

"Sure." Shepard shrugged, like she met with smarmy blackmailers all the time. "We'll make sure he never bothers you again."

"What does that even- nevermind, I don't want to know." She inclined her head. "Thank you again, Commander."

/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\

Alenko followed his friend into a side hallway off the main drag of the Presidium. They'd been walking at a brisk pace for a few minutes, leaving the crowd behind, and increasingly the shops and restaurants as well. Here, it was darker, and plainer. The corridor gave way to drab corporate entryways interspersed with the occasional potted plant. One would think they'd be wilted in their planters, but if anything the dirt looked freshly watered.

His stomach rumbled. Half a joke and half a warning, he said, "Mat, I swear, if you're kidnapping me to your actual office…"

Matsuo laughed. "Don't get me wrong, Kaidan, I still think you're crazy, but I stopped trying to talk you out of this military cr- stuff years ago. We're nearly there."

Alenko didn't want to rehash old arguments yet again. "Kind of out of the way."

"If it weren't, it'd have a line as long as the others." Mat shrugged. "Great coffee th-"

"Wait a second." Alenko held out his arm to stop him walking. Up ahead, a salarian was crouched next to a keeper with a watering can. The creature took no notice as it went about its landscaping duties, while the salarian was fiddled with something clutched in its hands.

Alenko's brow furrowed. He took a step forward.

The salarian caught the movement out of the corner of his eye, yelped, dropped whatever it was he was holding, and bolted down the hall.

"What the hell?" Alenko pointed at the device as he sped past, gaining speed. "Pick that up, would you?"

Salarians were tall, and they had evolved to catch things that flew from a position on the ground. The guy knew how to run. Alenko was hardly out of shape, but it was all he could do to keep up. The man skidded around a corner and tried to disappear through a doorway.

A control panel blocked his escape path, forcing him to pause. Alenko slapped two keys on his omnitool and the panel went out in a shower of sparks. The salarian let go fast.

"Alright," Alenko said, his hand going to his sidearm on autopilot but not drawing. "What exactly were you doing back there that made you cut and run?"

"Nothing," he said quickly, too quickly. He kept his hands visible and his eyes wide, and glued to Alenko's pistol.

Alenko eased off with a touch of guilt. The salarian didn't look armed- just scared. He folded his arms. "Who are you?"

His inner lids flicked over his eyeballs nervously. "My name is Chorban. I'm a scientist."

At that moment, Mat rounded the corner, only wheezing a little, his suit jacket in disarray. In his spare hand he held an awkward plastic device with a datapad mounted in the center and a few shaped wire coils protruding from the top. "Holy shit. I almost lost you in that."

"They teach us to run pretty fast in the marines, Mat. Maybe you should try it." Alenko couldn't resist for all the eezo on the _Normandy_.

"Alex would kill me," Mat declared without a shred of hesitation. "And then he'd find a way to raise my corpse, just so he could kill me again."

Chorban's eyes darted between them and the door. Alenko's attention snapped back to him. "You still haven't answered my question. What were you doing?"

"I wasn't doing anything wrong!"

"So, you were doing _something_."

The salarian inhaled, his nostrils flaring, and sized them both up. Then he looked away, capitulating. "I was trying to collect some data on the keepers. Scans, specifically. It's amazing that they've been here since we discovered the Citadel but we know almost nothing about them."

"Scanning them?" Mat was incredulous. "Do you _know _how illegal that is?"

"It's not illegal!" he protested hotly. "It's illegal to _interfere_ with the keepers. My scanning doesn't bother them. It's completely non-invasive!"

Alenko exchanged a glance with Mat. He wasn't a Citadel resident, and far from an expert on its laws. "It doesn't sound much different."

The salarian's shoulders sagged. "They don't seem to notice my scans at all. You saw the passivity of the one in the hall. Truthfully… nothing seems to disturb them. In the old days, people used to kill them for sport, and nothing happened."

There was something almost sad in the way Chorban stood there, contemplating the futility of his research, and entirely unconcerned in light of that with what C-Sec might think of his study. Alenko almost felt bad for interrupting him, and now he wasn't sure what to do next. Just letting the guy leaved seemed counterproductive, but he had no authority to detain him, nor was he inclined to get C-Sec involved.

Mat's omnitool buzzed loudly. He grimaced. "My boss, wondering where the hell I am. You've got this?"

"Yeah." He took the scanning device. It really was an odd contraption, obviously homemade, and seemed primarily comprised of prefab components off the extranet. "Sorry I made you late."

"I made me late," Mat corrected. "Take care, Kaidan."

"Say hello to your family for me." As his friend departed, Alenko turned back to the salarian. "Can I ask _why _you care about this, exactly?"

Chorban simply blinked at him. "Because we don't know anything, and the keepers control everything."

/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\

At eleven o'clock in the morning, the bar of Flux was abandoned. A bored volus scrubbed the same spot of the bar with a tired rag while nodding occasionally to the prattling of the waitress leaning against it. Upstairs, a pair of elderly turians tried their luck at the slot machines. Even the music sounded empty as it reverberated, harsh and loud, against the walls without a mass of flesh to deaden it.

Ashley Williams stepped into this nadir of activity, ignoring the quavering lights, and plopped herself on a bar stool back towards the wall. The volus and the waitress exchanged a glance.

The chief rapped her knuckles against the bar. With a roll of her eyes, the waitress approached. She was human, early twenties, with a cap of brown hair rivaled in sleekness only by the cut of her long dress, a prevalent style aboard the Citadel. Williams found it ridiculous. Whoever thought rubber opera gloves were attractive, anyway?

The girl smiled, more polite than authentic. "What can I get you?"

"A vodka tonic." Williams straightened and smoothed the cloth of her uniform before folding her hands neatly on the bar. Each syllable was clipped and falsely bright. "With a dash of bitters and a wedge of lemon."

The waitress took a wary step back. "We don't have lemons, ma'am, but there's an asari fruit with very similar-"

"Of _course _there is," she growled. The waitress took another step back. Williams rubbed her forehead. "It's fine."

"I'm sorry, it's just that very little human fruit makes it all this-"

"I said it's fine." She turned her eyes back to her folded hands.

The girl took the hint and carried the order back to the volus. Williams stole a glance, and watched the server making a bottle-drinking motion with her hand and shrug.

"I'm not a drunk," she said, loudly.

"It's… just that it's eleven in the morning, ma'am." The girl reddened. Her name badge read _Rita _in large letters.

It was hard to tell, what with the suit and all, but the volus seemed to narrow his eyes. Williams reverted her gaze to the back wall of the bar. "I don't have anything better to do right now, that's all."

Rita's answer came after a pause two beats too long to be comfortable. "As you say, ma'am."

The drink was produced and set on a coaster close at hand. The fruit was solid, more like an apple, but had a pleasantly acidic scent. Williams took a sip. Grudgingly, she had to admit it wasn't half bad.

The pair of servers went back to their conversation. Williams ignored them, and cued up her omnitool instead. There wasn't much worth looking over. For the moment, she was routing all email about her unit to a new directory, so she didn't have to see it. She wasn't ready to deal with all that. There was a brief letter from her sister, expressing relief at her survival. Williams wrote home at the first chance after the attack to make sure her survival reached them ahead of the news. Abby at least avoided their mother's hysterics. Mom was a strong, staunch woman, but life in the Alliance had dragged her to hell and back and her stamina was exhausted.

She took another sip of her drink. It wasn't like she never knew what she was getting into, signing up. Dad made it clear there was a lot of hurry up and wait. What he never conveyed was that waiting, when everything was urgent and the simple fact of being alive demanded action, could feel like this, like the weight of the world was slipping down her back.

As the thought entered her head, Williams could almost hear his response, cadenced quiet against her restlessness. _"Serene, I fold my hands and wait / Nor care for wind, nor tide, nor sea; / I rave no more 'gainst time or fate / For lo! my own shall come to me."_

Burroughs wasn't her favorite, nor his, but it fit the moment. She herself would have chosen the third stanza rather than the first, but that was just her being snarky. _We could use a little bark and destiny right now…_

The counter rattled suddenly. Down at the other end of the bar, the conversation had evidently devolved into an argument. Rita had just slammed her fist upon it. "This isn't funny, Doran!"

"I never said that it was," the volus, Doran, soothed. "But your sister's a big girl. I was sorry to lose her, but she'll make more in tips alone working up at Chora's Den, you know that."

"It's not about the money. You _know _how stubborn Jenna is. I swear, she stays on just to spite me."

On impulse, Williams drained the last of her cocktail and rattled the ice in the glass. A flicker of annoyance crossed Rita's face as she trekked back down to her seat. "Yes? Can I get you something else?"

"A refill."

Again the false smile. "Coming right up."

Williams watched Doran make it up, and had the icebreaker ready when the girl returned. "You know, I've got a stubborn sister too. Sorry, I couldn't help but overhear."

For a second she thought Rita would walk off, but she sighed and lowered herself onto the neighboring stool, her hands fidgeting in her lap. "I don't even know what to do anymore. She gets these wild notions in her head."

"Sarah does that sometimes, too," Williams said with sympathy. "You should meet some of the guys she dates."

Rita's laugh was more despairing than commiserating. "I wish that were the worst of it."

"I know the Den is a seedy place, but-"

"She's…" Rita glanced around, and lowered her voice. "She's working undercover, for C-Sec. I begged her not to- everyone knows there's something mean going on there- but she went anyway. Jenna wanted to 'do her part', whatever that means."

Ashley Wiliams was Alliance through and through. She knew exactly what it meant.

"Does she have any training for a sting operation…?" she probed, carefully.

"Aside from a nice enough body to wear the clothes?" Rita snorted. "Not even a seminar."

Chief Williams was confused. "So why would C-Sec even ask her, then?"

"I don't know! They needed someone with server experience, someone who'd fit in up there. Jenna's a good woman. She just wanted to do what she thought was right. But it's way too dangerous."

Williams thought about it a moment. "I could go down there and have a talk with her. I'm with the Alliance- I've seen some things and maybe I can turn her around."

The look she got for that was very jaded. "No offense, ma'am, but this isn't Earth. The Alliance doesn't carry the same weight or demand the same respect."

She knew there was a diplomatic response in there somewhere, but she didn't care to find it. "Rita, I'm not some knuckle-dragging gunslinging gorilla or whatever the hell you people think out here. I've earned distinction in every level of training I've received. I serve aboard the _SSV Normandy_ under Lieutenant Commander Shepard, who you Citadel lot may recognize better as Spectre Shepard. And last but not least I am the last surviving member of the 212th Marine Division, most recently posted to Eden Prime."

Rita let out a breath. Williams didn't allow her focus to waver. "Can you honestly tell me you think I have no experience of value with dangerous situations to share with your sister?"

"Alright. Alright." There was almost a real smile about Rita's mouth now, grim, but real. "If you want to go speak with her, you've got my blessing, for whatever that's worth."

"I wasn't doing anything anyway." Williams pushed away from the bar and dug through her pocket. "How much for the drinks?"

"If you really think you can help Jenna, they're on me. Don't worry about it."

/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\

The crowds at the market began to die down as lunchtime slid into early afternoon. It never exactly quiet, not in the largest market of one of the Citadel's most populated wards, but Shepard and Garrus managed to find the required stall without much trouble.

The Citadel took a different approach to sales than Shepard was used to. Human space stations tended to be small affairs, with limited inventory when there was much for sale at all, even on Arcturus or Gagarin. The Citadel was home to eleven million people packed into a relatively small space. Same-day delivery wasn't so much a promise as a fact. So, instead of delegating large amounts of floor space to dedicated stores where customers could examine and handle the merchandise, they installed small kiosks manned by no more than two sales reps and equipped with state-of-the-art holographic displays for viewing the wares.

This particular stand specialized in armor. It was somewhat shocking to humans decades past when they first encountered the galactic community that the Council took such a liberal view of the sale of weapons and arms. Certainly, there were some items that remained solely in the hands of the military, because they were proprietary, or simply too dangerous, but on the whole it wasn't even a little difficult to get kitted up. After spending some time out in colonial space and giving it some thought, however, Shepard saw the logic. The galaxy was too damn big, too many worlds and too many conflicts. There was no way any fleet of any size could adequately defend it all. The more the Council could get people to help themselves, while maintaining an edge for the various fleets, the easier their job became. Or maybe there was just no other way. It was the same rationale that allowed mercenary groups to flourish with little more than the occasional wrist-slap when they poked their nose too far over the border into Council space.

Garrus, naturally, had another theory. "It's because everything 'official' is too slow. Look at what happened on Eden Prime. One frigate, against Saren's war machine, that was only present by sheer coincidence? Ridiculous."

"Don't you bring up Eden Prime to me." Then she rolled her eyes. "The nearest available carrier group was three relays away. It took them a few hours after they got our distress call. It happens."

"Which is why every colony needs to be prepared to defend itself. At the end of the day, everyone's alone out there. It's true on the Citadel, it's true in the colonies, and it's still true on Palaven and I'd bet Earth, too."

She shook her head with disbelief. "You really don't like organized government, do you. Surprising you'd end up in Citadel Security."

Garrus made a face. "My dad's choice, not mine. I think that's our salarian."

Indeed, there was a gray-skinned man fidgeting nervously at the counter of the kiosk. His eyes darted around the market, scanning faces and occasionally the clock mounted on the far wall. There was a word stitched onto the breast of his uniform in salarian script that her translator read out as Morlan.

They approached casually. At first, Morlan didn't even notice their presence.

Shepard leaned on the counter. "Hi."

He jumped a little. "Hello. Welcome to my shop. I'm afraid we mostly carry armor for salarians and turians, but if you wait a moment I'm sure I can find someth-"

"We're not here about that." Garrus kept his attention on the other shoppers, clearly anticipating an ambush.

"We're here about Dr. Michel," Shepard clarified.

He skittered back a step. "She was supposed to come herself!"

Shepard smiled, not unpleasantly. "She's busy."

"What do you want?" He eyed her warily.

Before she could reply, a heavily armed krogan, yellow-skinned and green-plated, strode up to the stall. "What's going on here? Where's the doctor?"

"Not coming," Shepard said firmly.

"Not acceptable." His hands rested easy around his shotgun.

Garrus started reaching for his own weapon. The commander laid a hand on his arm. "You're just going to have to learn to live with the disappointment."

"Who the hell-"

She shoved her face into his. "This is how it's going to be. You're going to leave her alone. For good. No more threats, no more tattling, no more calls early in the morning. Or your life is going to become very difficult if not impossible. Do you hear what I'm saying?"

The krogan held his ground for a few tense moments. She never allowed her eyes to leave his. Krogan were known as predators. You didn't let them smell weakness.

Then he snorted, and spat on the ground. "Have it your way. I'm just a middleman, and I'm not being paid enough to deal with your crap."

He spared a glare for Morlan. "I should've known you'd fuck up everything. Bringing you into this was a mistake. I'll make sure Banes knows that."

Garrus gave him a smile that was not a smile. "I think you should go now."

The krogan spat a second time and ambled off, muttering to himself. Garrus turned back to Morlan with an expression of sheer contempt. The salarian quavered. "Don't worry, I'm going to stay out of it, too. You have my word."

"Damn straight you are," Shepard muttered. They strolled away a bit, finding a quiet corner where they could call Dr. Michel and give her the good news. She was ecstatic. Shepard could fault her judgment- the doctor didn't seem to have the sense a bird was born with- but she was dedicated to her calling and the people she served. Hopefully, from here on out, she'd stay on the right side of the law.

Garrus did voice the question, though, just before wrapping up the conversation. "The krogan mentioned he worked for someone named Banes. Ring any bells?"

"No." The omnitool's refresh was out of sync, and faint horizontal lines wavered across her face. "Unless maybe he meant Armistan Banes. That would make sense. We worked together in the same clinic, the one the fire me, many years ago."

Shepard leaned into the frame, concerned. "Do you think he'll continue pursuing this?"

"I don't know. He didn't seem a petty man when I knew him, but maybe his military service changed him."

Her eyebrows rose. "Military service?"

"I heard he enlisted shortly after I left. It's been so long, why try to embarrass me now?"

"I don't know. Stay safe, doctor."

Garrus cut the call and grimaced. Shepard shrugged, not knowing what to do either. "At some point she's responsible for her own decisions, Garrus. We can't protect her from someone who isn't showing his face."

"I know. I'd still like to go back to the station, talk to a guy I know there. Chellick. He handles plainclothes operations." They left the market and headed for a taxi stand.

"Thinking about getting her some security?"

Garrus appeared almost wistful for a moment. "Yeah."

"What happened to everyone needs to fend for themselves?" she asked dryly.

"Obviously it's more complicated than that. I was talking about _communities_, not individuals. People should stand up for each other instead of waiting for bureaucrats to do it for them."

"Let's get one thing straight, detective." Shepard stopped walking and poked him in the chest. "I don't consider myself any kind of bureaucrat. I'm a soldier, I'm proud to serve, and I know I wouldn't be as effective at my job- which, by the way, includes protecting galactic citizens- if I didn't have the weight and resources of the Alliance behind me."

"So you're saying people should just stand by when-"

"I'm saying not everyone's equipped to do that." She let out a sigh of exasperation. "I'm saying that's why they have the Alliance and C-Sec and the rest of it. I'm saying Eden Prime happens when people like Saren start buying out of the system, not when people buy into it."

"You can be a real jackass, Shepard."

"So my mother keeps telling me."

/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\

Chora's Den was back to business as usual remarkably fast. C-Sec got the bodies cleared out and a good cleaning service did the rest. Fist's partners were eager that neither the name of their newly-inherited enterprise nor the profits there from be sullied by the incident. The staff of bartenders, dancers, and bouncers hadn't numbered among Fist's mercenary protection and missed the fighting altogether.

Chief Williams wasn't certain how to feel about that. Lieutenant Alenko told her what happened, in a matter-of-fact kind of way. If the next afternoon everything could be back to normal… She wasn't sure she wanted to live in that kind of world. Was this what Eden Prime would be like two months or two years from now? And what the hell was the problem with the Citadel, that even the talking heads on the vids talked about the massive shoot-out as gangs falling out, in bored tones eager to turn their attention to more exciting matters? Or maybe Udina really was that good at spin control.

Williams pushed through the screaming bass and into the club.

The bar was surprisingly popular for the time of day. She had to wait for a group of what looked like asari tourists, tipsy all and whispering giddily to each other about their daring, to clear out before she was able to approach. "I'm looking for Jenna?"

A young woman turned around with a questioning smile. Her hair was slicked back and the shiny plastic magenta catsuit she was wearing couldn't have been tighter if Fist sewed her into it. "That would be me. Do I know you…?"

"Not yet." Williams rested her forearms on the bar. "I'm Gunnery Chief Williams, with the Alliance."

"Yeah, I really wish you guys would stop coming in here. The bullet holes don't add to the décor." She laid her hands flat on the counter. "What do you want?"

She hadn't expected open hostility, but forged ahead regardless. "I was in here a few days ago, with two of my superiors."

"Right, root beer girl." Jenna laughed, picking up a glass and a rag.

"Right." Williams frowned. "Look, I ran into your sister, up in Flux. She's really worried about you. You don't know what kind of guys are running this joint."

Jenna looked down at her pointedly. "I do know what kind people I work for, thank you very much. And I don't appreciate Rita hiring out some slack-jawed Alliance yokel from out in the sticks to try to scare me into submission."

Williams blinked, at a complete loss as to how to respond to that.

_Shepard would know_, an insidious voice whispered at the back of her mind, but she shoved it back into the dark where it belonged. Williams squared her shoulders. "Rita knows you're here undercover for C-Sec, Jenna. It's dangerous. Maybe deadly."

"I don't know what you're talking about." She set the glass down with enough force to rattle the others lying in their rack under the bar. "And if you're not going to buy anything, I'd appreciate it if you'd get out of the way. I'm not a stripper. I don't get paid to stand around looking pretty."

"You need to wake up, Jenna. These guys don't mess around."

"Neither do I, Ms. Williams." She pierced her with a glare. "Are you _out of your mind_? Get out of my bar before I have to call security."

The chief opened her mouth, then shut it. She shoved away from the bar. "You know what? Screw you. I don't need this."

She stalked from the club, every step shaking with anger. The hatch opened at her approach and shut behind her, leaving her in the barely-lit alley in front of Chora's Den. She took a moment to lean against the rail, rubbing her forehead.

Someone grabbed her arm and shoved her up against the wall. She found herself staring into a turian face, painted with white markings. "Are you crazy, Chief?"

"Who the fuck are you?" Wililams wasn't green to self-defense, but neither was her attacker. She found she couldn't break his grasp.

"An interested party," he hissed. "You're about to blow my whole operation and get that girl killed so you can be a hero. You don't deserve my name."

She kicked, hard, at his shin. He grunted and loosened his grip, just for a moment, and she managed to squirm free. He grabbed her arm. "Let me go. You don't have any right-"

"I have every right to detain you for reckless endangerment of a C-Sec resource, interfering with an operation, and probably ten other things. But I'm asking you to come with me. Don't make this hard when it could be easy."

"Come with you where?"

"Back to C-Sec for a debrief." He frowned. "It beats a formal complaint to the Alliance, particularly right now when you need the Council so very badly. After the stunt your spectre pulled here, I suspect your ambassador has used up all his good will."

She bit her lip. This was way over her head, and she didn't need a C-Sec officer to tell her that. She'd just gotten a leg up on the ladder. Getting knocked down a rung now because of something this stupid… Williams couldn't bear the thought. She nodded. "Alright."

/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\

Chorban's apartment consisted of two rooms, plus a bathroom, coated in scrap electronics, candy bar wrappers, and datapads two years behind the current models. In a corner a homemade VI hummed away. Alenko stepped carefully to avoid touching anything. "You live here?"

"I'm busy," the salarian said defensively. "I live in a world of ideas."

"Ideas that don't encompass various theories of hygiene," Alenko observed.

"Don't be such a… mammal." His nostrils flared, annoyed. "Do you want to see my data or not?"

He followed him to the terminal near the VI, where Chorban typed in a rapid series of commands. Alenko found a clean patch of wall to lean against and folded his arms. "I still think you're exaggerating. People have lived here for thousands of years. We can't know _nothing _about the keepers."

"We know nothing. No, really, _we know nothing._ The keepers can access parts of the Citadel even the Council can't. We don't know how they get in. We don't know what goes on there. How do they reproduce? We don't know. We've never seen any young, or any old or any sexual differentiation for that matter. Do they even die? There's never been a dead one found other than the ones we've killed. How do they communicate? _Do _they communicate? What-"

"Alright." Alenko held up his hands in a gesture of surrender. "I understand your point. But why get involved in this? Maybe you're right and the scanning doesn't do any harm, but I'm certain C-Sec won't care."

Chorban pursed his lips. "I've been interested in their habits for a long time. I was raised on the Citadel. But it was my… colleague who realized that the medical scanners from Sirta Technologies could be modified to evaluate the keepers quickly and non-invasively. So we came up with the idea to construct a database."

"And Sirta Technologies was ok with you reworking their technology for this study?" Alenko raised his eyebrows.

"We… didn't exactly ask." Hurriedly, he typed in another command and swiveled the terminal towards the lieutenant. "Here, take a look."

Despite himself, he leaned towards the screen with ample curiosity. This couldn't have looked like a worse idea if Chorban painted it in giant red letters across his doorway, but Alenko didn't agree with the Council either. Sure, the keepers were essential to maintaining the Citadel, but that didn't mean a total embargo on information was the appropriate means of preservation. Knowing was always better than not knowing.

The data was as intriguing as the salarian promised. There were low levels of electromagnetic radiation associated with the keepers, spiking at random intervals, almost as if they were using it to talk- but using every translation program Chorban could dig up, it still just looked like static. There were also a number of suspicious dark energy signatures that increased marginally in the proximity of the keepers relative to the Citadel background, which wasn't high to begin with. "They don't have anything going on, biotically-speaking, right?"

"Strange theory. I hadn't considered that." Chorban rubbed his chin. "Nobody's every observed it. But, as I've said…"

"Nobody knows anything."

"Right."

Alenko looked back at the data. If the keepers had any biotic potential… If they were secretly, privately, speaking with each other… The essential question was why. Did they have an agenda? Did they care that the many species of the galaxy had taken over their home, or, if Shepard's data from the beacon was accurate, the Protheans before them?

Alenko glanced at Chorban, who was wearing a very serious expression. "This could be huge."

"Tell me about it." The salarian crossed his arms, echoing Alenko's posture.

Alenko made a decision. "What do you need?"

"Help." The word was expelled on a fuel of exasperation mixed with desperation. "I have a job, you know. If my employer knew what my partner and I were doing, that we'd… borrowed things from the lab…"

"Wait, what?"

Chorban ignored the interruption. He paced the room, ticking off objections on his fingers. "I just don't have the time to get the kind of coverage that we need. You're with the Alliance and you're not a resident. You work for a spectre. People are going to ignore what you do unless it's really egregious. If you could just take one of the scanners we built, just collect some data when you have time-"

Alenko looked around the shithole apartment with the homebrew tech and gave some serious reconsideration to his recent life decisions. "I don't know."

"I'll share all our findings with you," he pressed. "What you do with them is up to you. I don't care about the profit in this. I just want to understand what's going on in my home."

He had a bad feeling about this. The kind of feeling that left a sour taste on his tongue and a knot in his gut. Still… it was too intriguing to pass up. He rationalized it as not really doing anything wrong. The Alliance didn't give a damn about the keepers one way or the other. "You understand I don't actually spend that much time on the Citadel."

Chorban brightened. "So you'll do it."

"Just give me the damn scanner."

/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\

Chellick barely looked up from his desk as Shepard and Garrus walked into his office. "Detective. Commander."

Williams was standing at attention against the wall. Shepard glanced between her and Chellick. "What the hell is going on here?"

"I was hoping you could tell me." The turian folded his hands on his desk. "I find one of your underlings actively interfering with my investigation into Chora's Den, not even twenty four hours after you storm the place, again without any oversight or permission. And you, Vakarian- I thought you'd have learned your lesson the last dozen times."

"Interfering?" Shepard was livid. "All I see is you detaining one of my marines, in your personal office. If you have legitimate grounds there are channels for this kind of thing."

"Do you really want me to explore those channels, commander?" Chellick was unamused. "She nearly blew an informant's cover in the middle of the location under surveillance. I have every right. I'm merely surprised that you responded so quickly."

Belatedly, Shepard noticed her message light was blinking on her omnitool. "Coincidence."

"It's Dr. Michel again. She could use a little watching over," Garrus said.

The attempt to change the subject failed. Shepard looked over at Williams. "Chief, is this true?"

"I don't know what to say." Williams swallowed. "I was just trying to help a friend."

"You interrupted an investigation?"

"She walked right up to my informant and outed her."

Shepard was flabbergasted. "What were you thinking?"

"I… I don't think I was. Ma'am." Her eyes were fixed straight ahead. "She's a bartender in Chora's Den. I told her sister I'd try to get her out of there. It's a dangerous place."

"But she's an undercover C-Sec agent. " Shepard tried to be reasonable despite her depleted patience. "She's had training."

"No, ma'am, she hasn't. C-Sec plucked her out of another bar because they needed someone who would fit in."

Shepard glanced over her shoulder at Chellick. "Is this true?"

He met her inquiry with a glare. "She volunteered. Jenna knew the risks. We didn't sugarcoat it."

"I was only trying to do the right thing, ma'am." Williams knew she screwed up, but she refused to resort to pleading. She had a defeated air- like she knew punishment was coming and was already cringing away from the blow.

Shepard pinched the bridge of her nose.

"God damn it, Ash," she said, more to herself than anyone else, without much rancor.

"I'm sorry, ma'am?" Her brow wrinkled.

"I'm beginning to understand why your career stalled out at NCO rank." Shepard overrode Williams' immediate objections. "You're borderline insubordinate, you don't respect your officers or your crewmates, you let your mouth run entirely unchecked, and you go off on your own without pausing to think it through."

By now, her face was burning. Williams opened her mouth again. The commander raised an eyebrow. She shut it.

"Good. For once, you're using your head." Shepard turned back to Chellick, and asked, calmly. "So, what is it going to take to get this Jenna out of there?"

Everyone stared at her for a silent, startled moment. Garrus started to laugh.

"I'm not certain I heard you correctly, Commander." Chellick was nonplussed.

"What do you need to wrap up Jenna's part in your investigation?"

"I…" He blinked, clearly at a loss for words. "There have been some troubling arms sales recently, in illegal weapon mods. We think the initial meet-ups are happening at the Den, which is why I needed someone on the inside. These guys are jumpier than jackrabbits. I need to ID the seller so I can start tracing the shipments back."

Shepard nodded. "So I get you a name, you extract her. Deal?"

"If you can get me a name, I can do better than that. I've been trying for five months."

Garrus was still grinning. "You are an entirely surprising person, Commander."

"Agreed." Chellick couldn't decide whether to frown or laugh. He shook his head. "Detective, stick around a few minutes and we'll discuss these protections for your Dr. Michel. Among other indiscretions."

Garrus grimaced, but took a seat in front of the desk. "Thanks again, Commander."

Shepard knew a dismissal when she heard one. She collected Chief Williams and left the station.

Williams half-jogged to keep up. "Thank you, ma'am."

"Don't thank me." Shepard was still furious, and she let it show. "What you did was stupid and reckless, and could have gotten the Alliance in a lot of trouble at a time when we need the Council's good will, not to mention expose that girl to a world of hurt."

She made a disgusted noise. "Why not just leave me to rot then, if my judgment is so bad? Seems like it would solve more than one of your problems."

Shepard whirled on the spot. Williams nearly collided with her. "I don't roll on my marines, Chief. You're my crew. As far as I'm concerned, the _only _person who gets to kick your ass is me. Not some turian officer from Citadel Security with a burr in his craw."

They resumed walking. The chief was silent a few minutes as she processed that. Tentatively, and a little less defensive, she said, "Ok. But there wasn't any reason to help me out."

Her commander sighed. "Just because you were using your heart instead of your brain doesn't mean you're wrong. Justifying the use of civilians as undercover operatives is amateur hour."

They arrived at a taxi stand and summoned a cab. Shepard directed it towards the krogan docking bay, much to Williams' confusion. She didn't bother to explain.

Her hunch panned out, and she found Wrex waiting in departures without too much trouble. He stood as soon as he saw her and shoved his snout in her face. "Give me one reason I shouldn't pull my shotgun and blow your lying head clear off."

"Because I did you a favor, Wrex." She put an arm out to stop Williams from doing anything stupid. "And because I'm a faster draw."

"Explain. If I don't like what I hear, we'll see about the second claim."

Shepard rolled her eyes. "C'mon. You're not a fool. This isn't some backwater planet. This is the Citadel! Did you really believe you'd get away with a very public hit on a mark with as many connections as Fist? I sent him packing and cut him off from his allies, when I could have stolen your contract quite easily instead."

Wrex eyed her. Her expression was very dry. Finally, he leaned back, relaxing, and crossed his arm. "You've got a quad, human. Easy to believe you're a spectre. Hard to believe you're a female, though."

"Charming." She smiled thinly. "Maybe your women are just sick of dealing with your crap, Wrex."

He snorted, but she thought she saw a smile hidden beneath the gruff reply. He said, "I'm guessing you didn't come out here to tell me this. What do you need, Shepard?"

The commander got right to the point. "I'm trying to track down a seller of illegal weapon mods. Who better to ask than a merc?"

"Hah. I might know something." Now there was definitely a smile. "But I want something, too."

"Tell me and I'll think about it."

"You lost me Fist." He stabbed a finger into her chest armor. "You're going to help me find him again."

"I'm not an assassin, Wrex. And I'm tracking Saren. I'm not going to allow anything to interfere with that."

"You can keep your fussy morals. I'll be pulling the trigger." He rubbed his chin. "And as for Saren, I've got my own beef with him. I wouldn't mind bringing him down."

Shepard folded her arms and gave the offer due consideration. On the one hand, she wasn't entirely comfortable bringing an alien mercenary soldier onto a classified Alliance frigate, let alone shill for him. But on the other, he seemed to know something about Saren, and she wasn't in a position to turn down new leads. And then there was Williams, whose face was tight and drawn, waiting. The commander had no inkling why rescuing this girl was so important to her, nor why she was humoring the notion. Maybe it was simply the need right now to do _something_ tangible- for both of them.

"Agreed," she said. "Give me a name."

"You want Jax," he answered promptly. "He's a krogan arms dealer. I might've done some business with him awhile back. I'll even set up a meeting."

"You do that." Shepard waited, foot tapping, while Wrex spoke quietly into his omnitool.

The conversation was brief. It wasn't even five minutes before he closed out the call and looked up. "Lower market, thirty minutes. See you on your boat, Shepard."

They chose to walk, to give their legs a bit of a stretch. Every species with representation on the Citadel had a designated docking area, so it was a simple matter to find a path from the krogan bay back down to the Presidium ring. Along the way, they ran into Alenko, who was carrying some kind of strange plastic device.

Upon spotting them, he saluted. "Ma'am."

"Lieutenant." She pointed towards the device with her chin. "What the hell is that?"

"It's a long story, ma'am."

"I believe it." She shook her head. "You might as well come with. I wouldn't mind an extra set of eyes on this one."

He fell into step. "Where are we going?"

"Lower markets. We're giving C-Sec a helping hand. Williams' idea." Shepard held up a hand to forestall the obvious question. "It's another long story. I'll explain later. For now, suffice to say we're meeting a potential hostile and I'm not sure how it's going to play out."

Jax wasn't hard to spot. Even among krogan he stood out, with brilliant blue head plating and a smug scowl that could outdo even Wrex. They found him leaning against a pile of shipping crates, flanked by two associates.

He recognized her immediately as the commander approached. "Hah. Wrex said to expect someone important. Sooner or later everyone comes to me, even spectres, but you must hit the ground running."

"I didn't come here to talk." Shepard lifted her chin.

"Fair enough." He gestured at his companion. "You got my payment?"

She raised an eyebrow and didn't disguise her sarcasm. "Depends. You got my mods?"

He grunted and the underling tossed her a package. She made a show of inspecting the contents and tried not to look taken aback by what she saw. Even in Alliance spec ops, polonium and chemical rounds were prohibited on the basis of being over-the-top to the point of offensive.

"Satisfied?" he asked. There was a hint of satisfaction about him, as if he sensed that he'd surprised her.

Shepard handed the package to Alenko and pulled up her omnitool to make the credit transfer. "Very."

Covertly, it also recorded a few images of Jax and his associates that she hoped might be of use to Chellick. Jax gave her a single, sparing nod after the transaction cleared, and disappeared back into the market crowd.

Shepard waited until he vanished to let out a breath she didn't realize she was holding. She nodded at Williams. "Let Chellick know we have his name, and his goods. He can shake your friend loose."

"Aye aye, ma'am." The chief started searching the Citadel directory. "I'm still shocked nobody died."

"I could shoot somebody if it would make you feel better," Alenko offered. Shepard smothered a laugh.

Williams pretended to consider it. "Nah, I'm good."

Shepard stole a glance at the time. "If people wonder why the Alliance never gets anything done, it's because of days like this. Let's head back to base."


	14. Chapter 14

Shepard waved away the brush-wielding asari with rather more aggression than the last time. The girl teetered on her heels to avoid the swipe and nearly tripped over her flared skirt. "Ma'am, please-"

"I've told you twelve times I can do my own damn make-up," Shepard growled. She was sitting in a tiny room in the depths of the Citadel Tower, trying to make herself presentable for the induction ceremony scheduled to begin shortly. It would be going rather better if not for the half dozen people who stopped by to express an interest in her hair, wardrobe, cosmetics, shoes, even her posture. She hit it on the nose, talking to Anderson several evenings past- this was _entirely _political. All form and little substance.

At least she managed to talk the Alliance protocol officer out of whites. Shepard didn't own a set, and the two times in her life she had to wear them she came out looking like a roll of paper towels. If there was any upside to this spectre business, it was going to be wearing what she damn well pleased while representing the office.

They compromised on dress blues. With just about every medal she'd ever been awarded hanging off it, but Shepard counted it a win.

The asari bravely made another attempt. "Commander Shepard, ma'am, broadcast is different from daily wear."

Shepard snorted. "They could've had anyone. They picked me. You think I haven't been on the vids before?"

There was a knock on the door. Anderson stuck his head inside. "Do you have a moment?"

"Yep, we're all done here." Shepard tried not to laugh as the girl swore under her breath and stormed from the room. She took up the abandoned angle brush and started to undo the damage. "What can I do for you, sir?"

He leaned against the wall and folded his arms, watching her tamper with her eye shadow. "You look…"

"What?"

He chuckled. "Ready."

"Well, I'd better be." She crossed her legs under the skirt and turned towards him. "Seriously, what did you want to talk about?"

His face turned serious. "What kind of leads have you picked up? I don't need to tell you the Traverse is a huge place, with hundreds of known worlds where Saren could be hiding. We could use something to let the Council know we're on top of it, straight out of the gate."

"Right." She started to rub her face, then recalled the vid-qualified pancake, and tapped her fingers on the desk instead. "I don't know, Captain. I've been pulling every bit of info I can on Benezia. She bought a… well, an asari-style condo, to be frank, in the capital, but kept her residence in Armali and never moved."

"I don't see the significance. It's not unusual for a person of a matriarch's stature to maintain several homes."

Shepard sat back. "I think she bought it for her daughter. The only way it could be closer to the university is if you pitched a tent in the gardens. The woman in question is an archaeologist, adjunct faculty."

Anderson's frown deepened, but there was excitement as well. "Don't tell me-"

"Specialty- Prothean civilization." It was an inappropriate topic for a smile, but Shepard allowed herself a sense of satisfaction. "Scientists aren't military, sir. They talk all the time. Say one of them collaborated with T'Soni. Next thing you know, Saren's on their doorstep. It fits."

"T'Soni?" Anderson pronounced the name correctly, accent and all. That wasn't usual for human vocal chords, not on the first try. "Not Dr. Liara T'Soni?"

It was Shepard's turn to be surprised. "You know her?"

"We extended a six-month contract her way in anticipation of recovering the beacon. It was couched in terms of rendering expert advice rather than pertinent information." The captain was troubled. "I don't think we gave her enough to tip off Saren with a location."

Shepard set down the brush and leaned forward. "So you know where she is?"

A smile. He gestured towards her arm. Managing not to roll her eyes too much, she activated her omnitool and held it out to him. "Still no plans to join the twenty-second century, sir?"

"Too complicated for an old man, and too exploitable." Anderson leaned forward and entered a set of coordinates Shepard recognized as the Artemis Tau cluster. "Upload those to the _Normandy _map when you get back on ship."

She couldn't resist another light jab. "You don't seem to mind that comm link buried in your ear."

"A useful evil." He grimaced faintly. "Also non-optional in the eyes of Alliance High Command."

The hatch slid open again and an asari, a different one, leaned her head inside. "We're on in five. The Council appreciates punctuality."

Shepard took a deep breath and stood, tugging on her jacket to straighten it. She offered Anderson a salute.

He returned it, and offered his hand. "You're ready. Good luck, Commander."

Traveling the short distance to the council chamber was less eventful than she imagined. The press was confined to the balconies, and C-Sec was enforcing the seating assignments with considerable gravity. There wasn't much room on the stair landing before the walkway into the center of the chamber, where several days past she'd proven Saren a liar and a traitor, but what space existed was allocated to Citadel and Alliance dignitaries alike. Udina was seated beside a pair of admirals Shepard didn't recognize on sight, sour-faced. She nodded. He sneered. It was par for the course.

The asari protocol officer took her arm at the walkway, stalling her. "Wait here."

She darted off into the crowd, datapad firmly in hand, already gesturing towards an assistant.

Shepard leaned against the rail, at ease, arms folded, and scanned the balconies. The press quadrant was easy to spot- half a million flashes went off every time she so much as glanced their way. She averted her eyes to save them burning. There was a decent turnout thronging the remaining space, peppered with more aliens than expected. She'd done a little digging purely out of idle curiosity. It was impossible to be certain given the secretive nature of Special Tactics and Reconnaissance, but of roughly a hundred estimated operatives, Shepard found only three names aside from her own in public mentions of spectres that were not turian, asari, or salarian. It was a goddamn spectacle.

Anderson and Udina sprinkled the crowds with as many Alliance as they could, for which she was strangely grateful. It made this ceremony feel more like just another commendation instead of a political maneuver that would ricochet across an entire civilization and change her life.

With N7, she had time to think through things. Years, in fact. Shepard was invited to Interplanetary Combatives Training before she could drink a beer in her parents' home country, for all that countries meant anything these days. Seventy percent of the recruits in her N1 cadre washed out. She'd loved it. For the first time in her life, all the things that were problematic about her, the ferocity, aggression, fearlessness, the misapplied creativity and the talent for thinking her way out of just about any situation- finally, they had a constructive purpose. Her high school counselors and her drill sergeant agreed on exactly one thing. Shepard's aptitude had never matched her achievement. Until spec ops.

It was a good match. Alliance command gave her the boundaries and discipline she desperately needed, and she gave them the outside the box thinking they required. By the time she picked up that shiny new helmet with its N7 insignia, she knew exactly what it meant, and precisely what it had and would cost her. The exchange was fair. Now… she had no idea. And she was eager enough for the free reign the spectres offered to worry her. How much had she grown up, really?

The crowd was dying down, interrupting her musing. The murmuring faded into silence. There was an expectant air.

She turned towards the walkway. At the far end, across the void that stretched all the way down to the lake, the councilors fussed at their terminals. Councilor Tevos looked up. "Commander Shepard, step forward."

Shepard cleared her throat, tugged at her tunic again, and started down the path.

The walk from the stair to the circular platform to address the Council took half a lifetime. She could hear every click of her shoes against the metal plates, every breath loud in her ears. For all her deeds, all her notoriety, all her complaints about grandstanding, for all that pointless ceremony was familiar, there was an unexpected and inescapable weight to this moment that made her blood pound.

High up in their nest, the reporters' cameras flashed and whirred, incessantly voracious, like she owed them something of her life, of herself. Fucking cannibals, all of them.

She reached the circular platform at the end of the walkway. Shepard drew herself to attention, and waited.

Tevos let the silence hang a few moments longer before launching into her prepared remarks. "You have come before us for consideration for promotion to Special Tactics and Reconnaissance, the first of your species to be granted this honor."

The asari paused then, as though for comment, so Shepard flowed her hands behind her back and lifted her chin. "Yes, ma'am."

"It is the decision of the Council that you be granted all the powers and privileges of a spectre of the Citadel." If anything, Shepard's stoicism seemed to have won her some credit in the asari's eyes. There was a measure of approval in her tone.

Councilor Jaeten, the salarian, took up the thread. "Spectres are not trained, but chosen. Individuals forged in the fire of service and those whose actions elevate them above the rank and file. These qualities are blind to species and philosophy alike, and transcend the experiences that brought you here."

His eyes were black, unblinking, as they weighed her. She felt herself stand a little taller.

Tevos continued, "Spectres are an ideal, a symbol. The embodiment of courage, determination, and self-reliance. They are the right hand of the Council, instruments of our will."

"Spectres bear a great burden." Velarn's gaze pierced her. "They are protectors of galactic peace, both our first and last line of defense. The safety of the galaxy is theirs to uphold. This is a great accomplishment and a great responsibility, for you and your entire species."

Shepard bowed. "I'm honored, Councilors."

"As you should be." Again, that approval in Tevos' voice. It was a subtle diplomacy, as much a manipulation as anything else. Clearly, one didn't become the asari councilor without some useful skills. "I understand it is a human tradition to raise your right hand at this point in our ceremonies."

Shepard held her hand beside her head, fingers together, and waited.

"Lieutenant Commander Nathaly Shepard," the asari said, raising her voice until it reached every corner of the chamber. "Do you so swear here today to conduct yourself as a worthy agent of this Council, to abide by the ideals that have governed our galactic civilization for millennia, and to act always in our name with respect, consideration, and morality?"

"I will." Shepard held her expression firm.

"And do you so swear to do all that is in your power as a woman, as a spectre, as a representative of galactic authority, to maintain the peace and prosperity that has graced our many peoples all these long years?"

"I will."

"Then it is my great privilege to name you, Commander Shepard, as a member of the highest echelons of Special Tactics and Reconnaissance, with all the benefits that title carries." The Councilor allowed herself a smile then. "May the goddess grant you wisdom and strength to do the office the honor it deserves."

Tevos turned towards her colleague. There was the ghost of a smile on Jaeten's lips. "Congratulations, Commander."

Shepard bowed again. The entire chamber burst into thunderous applause.

/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\

Two levels up, Lieutenant Alenko and Gunnery Chief Williams leaned against the balcony rail and watched Shepard bow a second time amidst the dying applause, murmuring the appropriate reassurance that she intended treat her new role with all due gravity. Williams was awed despite herself. This was history happening right in front of her eyes.

She leaned forward, craning her neck for a better view. "She looks good. Confident."

Alenko was more relaxed, his chin balanced in his hand as he took in the same scene. "She always looks good."

The quarian was pacing towards the rear of the patio, her slender arms folded across the belly of her suit. Shepard wanted her kept under strict surveillance, for her own protection, and thus far Tali seemed more grateful than annoyed. Getting shot could do that to a person. She glanced up at the marines. "What happens now?"

"Now, we go back to the _Normandy_ and get to work." Alenko continued watching the ceremony. "Finding Saren's going to be a lot harder than a needle in a haystack."

Tali looked at him blankly. "What's a 'haystack'?"

He chuckled. "Never mind. It'll be challenging, that's all I was trying to say."

Far below, the Council filed out as Shepard walked back across the bridge, where Anderson waited with the ambassador and a handful of other notables. They exchanged salutes before he shook her hand with a pride that was obvious even two stories up.

Williams glanced at the lieutenant. "Is it true that the Captain's giving up the ship?"

"That's the scuttlebutt." He shrugged. "It makes sense. Balancing the Council against Alliance Command is going to be difficult enough without having a superior officer breathing down her neck. But it's still a real blow the Captain, after all the work he put into the _Normandy_."

The quarian was working towards the end of a thought. "You should bring me with you."

"What?" Williams was taken aback. Even Alenko finally tore himself away from the view, raising an eyebrow at the alien woman.

Tali squared her shoulders and fidgeted with her hands, nervously. "Saren tried to kill me twice. I have as much a right to go after him as any of you. And the geth were created by my people- our mistake, our problem. It would dishonor us if I did not do all I can to make up for what happened to your colony."

"It's an Alliance ship-" Williams began hotly, but the lieutenant held out a hand to quiet her.

Looking back at the quarian, he said, "You're the only person we've met who has information on the geth that isn't three hundred years out of date. That data could be very helpful."

She nodded. "I am willing to share whatever I can. The flotilla is not… trusting of other species, not since our embassy was closed, but I am certain I can make them see the urgency."

"Why is that? I'm sorry, Miss Zorah, but if I understand correctly you're not even an adult among your people. What kind of influence could you have?" There was nothing accusatory in Alenko's question, just frank curiosity.

"That is true, but…" The mask hid her expression, but the hesitation was obvious. "My father is an influential man. He doesn't always listen to me, but I can try."

Williams grabbed his arm. "L.T., you're not serious. The _Normandy's _classified. She's representing an alien government. We can't allow her aboard."

Alenko was uncharacteristically stern. "The _Normandy _was a joint project sponsored in part by the Council. I'm not unsympathetic to your concerns, but we could use an expert on the geth. I'm taking it to the Commander."

She crossed her arms, sullen. "Yes, sir."

/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\

Anderson offered his congratulations, and then left Shepard to her own devices. The commander would give the Council this much- they knew how to host an event. As soon as the ceremony was complete, food and drink appeared in the tower gardens as though by magic. The guests soon dispersed along the pathways, breaking into smaller cliques to talk politics or gossip depending on their taste.

Udina seized her immediately and led her through the throng with expert experience. She managed to snag the most innocuous of the canapés, what looked like a small nut tart, to have something to do with her hands while he introduced her to a few dozen of his closest friends. Her brain took snapshots while she smiled and nodded until she thought her face might fall off. Shepard possessed an excellent memory, particularly for names and faces, and it was possible that the ambassador's contacts might prove useful, someday.

Nevertheless, she felt the beginnings of a headache by the time he cut her loose. A passing server offered her a glass of water and she took it gratefully. It had a light citrus note she couldn't quite identify, but it was pleasant enough.

Before she could enjoy more than a sip, she was approached by an Alliance officer, older, hair gone to gray and cut close to his head and a bit of a paunch evident under his uniform. There was concern written in the lines of his face, though he was doing his best to look relaxed. Shepard took in the stripes on his shoulder and saluted. "Admiral."

He returned the salute. "At ease, commander. I'm glad to see you still remember whose side you're on. Allow me to offer my congratulations."

"Thank you, sir." The suspicion rankled less the tenth time she heard it. She took another sip. The cold water was like nectar to a throat that ached from talking.

He plunged right in. "Commander, I came over here to ask a favor."

_You and everyone else at this party, _she thought. "I wasn't required to leave the Alliance, sir. You don't have to make it a request."

"I do, actually." He cleared his throat. "I'm Rear Admiral Kahoku, commander of the Fourth Frontier Division. I have a squad of marines missing in the Traverse on the edge of batarian space."

_Dark. Cold. Quiet. A whisper of air from the circulation vents. Nobody had talked in days. What was there to say? Hard synthetic seat, digging into her shoulders, but she didn't move away._

Shepard swallowed the unwanted memory in another gulp of water, and made a polite noise of sympathy. "Sounds bad."

"It was a recon mission. Classified. The Alliance is writing it off as a loss because they don't want to provoke the batarians, and I'm getting stonewalled by bureaucracy when I came here to ask for Citadel aid." His frustration was apparent.

Shepard raised her eyebrows. "You went around Alliance Command and told the Council about a sensitive op?"

It was a story only too familiar to her ears. As an N7 operative, she was aware that on most missions, failure meant she was on her own. The Alliance couldn't risk all-out war with the Terminus, the batarians, or any other splinter sect for the sake of a handful of marines. Especially when it came to the batarians and their hard-won peace. Even when Command hung her out to dry she never resented them for it. Too many people were dead already.

"No," he said impatiently. "Of course not. I told them it was a survey team. Our treaties with the Citadel require them to render aid to peaceful vessels in distress."

She sidestepped the issue for the moment. "What were your men doing out there? For real, I mean."

Kahoku pursed his lips. "Several months ago, a special operative by the name of Armistan Banes went missing in the Traverse. That's suspicious in itself. Then his body turned up on a derelict ship in the Artemis Tau cluster- frozen solid and not a mark on him."

"Banes?" She blinked, surprised.

"You know him? How?" He shook his head. "Never mind. I learned awhile back that I never want to ask how you N7 types know anything. Banes was as foul as they come. We suspected him of selling information before he vanished, but we had no idea to whom. I sent in a squad to investigate."

"And now they're missing, too. And you want to continue the row of dominos by sending in my team." Shepard was not amused. "Your marines are gone, admiral. I'm sorry."

"You can't know that." His expression was pained. It was clear he cared a great deal for his men, and took their welfare personally. It did him credit. "What if their ship was disabled, like Banes'? What if they're just drifting alone out there…"

He trailed off. This was the universal nightmare of sailors in any historic age. Ships stranded between ports, whether on the oceans of eras past or the reaches of the interstellar void, were utterly helpless. No matter how strict the rations, how inspired the repairs, how disciplined the men, eventually, resources ran out.

_She sat in the hard seat and watched the blip on the nav display inch closer to the white line and the safety it offered. This far into space there was little to stop them. One way or another, they'd cross back into Alliance territory. Eventually. She stared at the dot as if the intensity of her gaze could substitute for a busted drive core._

Her eyes narrowed suddenly, searching his face, but she found only earnest concern. This wasn't exploitative. That mission was as classified as they came, and this Rear Admiral Kahoku had no way of knowing his tact struck entirely too close to home.

Reluctantly, Shepard said, "I'm headed in that direction anyway, as it happens. I'll keep an eye out for your men."

The man actually sagged a little bit in relief. "That's all I'm asking."

"I can't promise anything," she warned.

"I know." He held out his hand. "Thank you, Commander."

She shook it, and let him go. The festivities were clearly winding down. At this juncture, a discreet exit would not be taken as rude.

Alenko as the first officer she came across, standing in an alcove with Williams and several more of the _Normandy's _marine detail, having their own private celebration. She was faintly annoyed. It didn't seem fair that they got to have all the fun while she had to endure two hours' worth of diplomatic posturing, when she was the entire reason they were there.

"Attention!" she snapped.

Instantly, all of the marines were on their feet, while the quarian gazed around in confusion. Shepard allowed herself a half-second's smug satisfaction. "Party's over. We've got a traitor to catch."

Salutes all around. She nodded to Alenko. "I don't know where the hell Pressly is, so I want you to get on the comm and tell the rest of the crew to get their asses back aboard ship. I want us pulling out of port in thirty minutes."

"Aye aye, ma'am." He turned away, pulling up his omnitool to sync the comm links before putting his fingers to his ear.

Shepard looked around the remainder of the detail, still stiffly at attention. "You have your orders. Dismissed."

Another round of salutes, and they filed out, with more hustle than was usual. She smiled.

Naturally, Williams didn't follow. "If I can have a moment, ma'am."

"Did I stutter, Chief?"

"No, ma'am." She quavered slightly. "It's about the quarian."

"My name is Tali," she cut in, exasperated, for only the tenth time.

Shepard gave the quarian a glance. "What about her?"

Alenko finished relaying her orders and turned back to the group. "She wants to come with us, ma'am. I think her advice on the geth could be invaluable."

"I'm concerned about the _Normandy's _security, ma'am," Williams interjected. "Quarians are known for their curiosity."

"What the hell is that supposed to mean?" Her withering look pinned Williams to the spot.

The girl swallowed. "It doesn't mean anything. I was just saying, it's a classified ship, and we might want to think about who we let poke around. Ma'am."

Tali's posture was disdainful, and disgusted. "You're afraid I'm going to- we're not thieves!"

"Your concern is noted, Williams." Her eyes cut back to Tali and she extended her hand. "Welcome aboard. Anyone willing to help us figure out what Saren's after is a welcome ally."

Williams took a step forward. "Ma'am-"

"I said your concern is noted." Her tone was cold enough to condense hydrogen. "Are you really going to lecture _me_ on security, Chief?"

She shook her head. "No, ma'am."

"Dismissed." Shepard watched the girl stalk away until she was out of hearing range, and turned to Alenko, livid and not bothering to disguise it. "As a marine, I consider her your problem."

Judging by his expression, he was about as happy with Williams' conduct as Shepard herself. "I'll take care of it."

"See that you do." She jerked her head towards the exit. "You should both go take care of any last-minute business. I'll meet you by the dock in thirty."

Shepard decided to take one last walk around the Presidium. The lake calmed her nerves as she gathered her thoughts. In truth, she wasn't too concerned about Chief Williams. There was nothing wrong with her a few weeks of scrubbing bathrooms until she learned to mind her mouth wouldn't fix. T'Soni presented a much larger problem. The _Normandy _didn't have a brig, for starters.

Despite the mythology surrounding special agents, Shepard wasn't trained in interrogation and was, in fact, repulsed by the idea. Not to mention those kinds of tactics rarely led to reliable information. But neither Shepard nor her shipwas prepared to take Dr. T'Soni into custody if she proved recalcitrant. It was the only lead they had- there was no choice but to follow it, even if she had no idea how this was going to play out when they got there. When they found the asari, Shepard would simply have to do whatever was required, and all she could do for now was hope it wouldn't come to anything like that.

The visions weren't making any more sense. Every time she tried to focus on any portion of it, pin it down, extract some kind of useful information, it slithered out of her grasp. It was like trying to watch the stars. The second she looked directly at one, it vanished into the blind spot of her eye. She could only see anything by looking indirectly.

At the same time, it was like an annoying song stuck in her head, for days on end now, replaying itself until she was sick to death of it. It was turning her brain to mush.

She was coming up on the mass relay sculpture, one of the treasures of the Presidium and one of the few pieces of art left from the Protheans. Most of the statuary was added later, as monuments to the accomplishments of a later people from another time. Though the relays possessed elegant aesthetics something about the sculpture made her uneasy, a faint buzzing in her skull, like an insect she couldn't swat away.

In a moment's childish impulse, she stuck her tongue out at it.

"Commander Shepard?"

Shepard whirled, caught off guard and faintly embarrassed. A petite woman in a tan suit was looking at her with bemusement. Her shoulder-length black hair was stylishly cut, olive skin flawlessly made up. She clutched a datapad and a camera drone hovered at one shoulder. "Commander Shepard, I'm Mary Liakos. I was hoping I might trouble you for a few questions."

"Liakos?" She finally placed the name. It'd been years. "You did the documentary on Akuze."

"And the twenty year memorial for 314, and the exposé on Torfan." Her brown eyes sparkled. "I was sorry to not be able to include any commentary from you on that occasion."

"So was I, after I saw it." Shepard still got any number of requests to contribute to various pieces of journalism surrounding Akuze. Most of it was crap. Liakos' work was refreshingly respectful and balanced.

"You saw it?" The journalist was delighted.

Shepard raised an eyebrow. "What're you doing here?"

"You came at good time. I've been working on a piece about Special Tactics and Reconnaissance for the last six months. You'd add an excellent dimension to the story, give it some depth, show my viewers the Council isn't entirely closed to new ideas…" Her smile was inviting, while at the same time self-deprecating, as if she was aware of how superficial her sales pitch sounded.

Shepard looked around a moment, hands in her pockets, considering. "I'm shipping out. But give me a call the next time I'm here and I'll give you an interview."

Liakos blinked. "Just like that?"

"Just like that." Shepard shrugged.

"I know the ANN brigade is beating down your door. Why me?"

"I can trust you to do a decent job?" Shepard glanced over her shoulder again. "Look, if I don't give them something soon people are going to start making shit up. I know how this goes. But right now-"

"You have to run. I understand." Another smile. "I'll be in touch."

Shepard headed towards the dock.

/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\

When Shepard got back to the main drag leading down towards the Alliance dock, she found Williams and Alenko taking in the view. They looked relaxed. Williams in particular didn't look like a marine who had just received a stinging reprimand.

They were laughing about something as she walked up. Alenko leaned back against the banister. "Hey, Commander."

Williams tossed her a salute, of all things. She was smiling. "Ma'am."

She looked between them, unnerved. "What's happening?"

"Just taking in the view." Alenko draped his forearms over the railing. Below them, one of the great arms that comprised a fifth of the Citadel's structure stretched out into the nebula. "It's a big place."

Shepard found she was unable to resist peeking over the edge herself. The buildings below were impossibly tall, but still impossibly far away. She shook her head, incredulous. From space it looked like a child's toy, the vastness reduced to simple ribbons of light. Shepard never took it all in from this angle. "This isn't a station. This is a city. There must be millions of people here, going about their lives like this is just another garden world."

Always colorful, Williams observed, "This place makes Jump Zero look like a portajohn, and it's the biggest station we've got."

"Jump Zero's big, but this place…" Alenko shook his head. "Just look at those ward arms! How do they keep all this mass balanced like this? It looks like it should fly apart under its own inertia."

Shepard rested on her elbows watching the shuttle traffic zip by. "This really brings home all that the Council represents. No wonder they're so careful with newcomers like us."

Williams was dismissive. "Or maybe they just don't like humans."

"I don't know." Shepard was still transfixed watching the flow of traffic across the arm, though her voice held a note of humor. At times like these she was strongly reminded of the bevy of old sci-fi fodder she ate up as a kid. "You ever watch those old vids, pre-spaceflight? We've got oceans, beautiful women, this emotion called love... apparently everything an alien could want."

"Yeah," Alenko said, absently, still studying the scene himself. "When you put it that way, there's no reason they wouldn't like you."

Shepard blinked at him. There was a moment of confusion as his mind caught up with what he'd just said, quickly followed by a flush of horror. "I mean, us, humans, ma'am."

Williams giggled. "You don't get much shore leave, do you L.T.?"

Alenko was mortified. Shepard gave him an easy out. "Alright, enough Chief. Alenko, not that I don't appreciate the sentiment, but we're on duty here."

"Yes, ma'am." He took the exit gratefully.

"Let's get going. I need to check that the resupply to the ship went through."

"I'll walk drag, ma'am." Williams snickered quietly.

"I said that's enough." Shepard was almost grateful herself for the required chastisement. It helped her hide the fizzy feeling spreading through her stomach. Shepard had been described by a lot of adjectives in her life. Beautiful was rarely one of them. She was a polyglot spacer kid, with mismatched features from all over humanity- dusky-skinned, ginger-haired, skinny as a boy, and on the tall side for most tastes.

Or, more likely, Alenko honestly did misspeak. It would be simpler, but she was more than a little surprised to be disappointed by the thought.

They got on the elevator and headed up to the _Normandy's _bay with tinny asari dinner music as their only accompaniment.

When the doors opened, Williams bounded out and made for the docking tunnel, happy to be on the move at last. Shepard raised an eyebrow at Alenko. "What the hell did you tell her, anyway?"

He bounced once on his toes, thinking it over. "Permission to speak freely, ma'am?"

She indicated he should go on. He shrugged, with a slight smile. "Screaming at people isn't always the answer. Particularly traumatized marines who are just going to shove back to prove they're still tough enough to do the job."

Shepard regarded him a long moment. At last, she said, "Point taken. And… thanks."

"Anytime, ma'am." He gave her a nod, and headed onto the ship.

As for Shepard herself, both the ambassador and the captain were waiting for her. She exchanged salutes with Anderson. "This still doesn't feel right, sir."

"You needed your own ship. A spectre can't answer to anyone but the Council." The wistfulness in his tone didn't escape her, but he didn't want a scene.

"I'll take good care of her, sir," Shepard said.

He nodded. "Will you take some advice from an old soldier that's been doing this a lot longer than you?"

She laughed at the old joke. "Haven't started to yet, sir, but there's always a chance."

"Keep your eyes on the real threat. Saren's gone, but we know what he wants. Find that and we'll have him by the balls." Anderson slammed his fist into his palm to emphasize his point. "This Conduit is the key to everything."

She stuffed her hands in her pockets. "Think it's another Prothean artifact?"

"I don't know, but I don't like the sound of it. What do you think?"

"If it does what he claims, it's got to be Reaper tech." Shepard shook her head. "They're the true threat. Saren's just a sideshow."

The ambassador cleared his throat. "If they even exist."

"It doesn't matter," Anderson cut in before she could argue the point. "This war is real enough- and if the Reapers do exist, the Conduit is how they return. Stop Saren from getting the Conduit and we stop the Reapers at the same time."

"I'll stop him." The pageantry and political juggling of the last few days might be meaningless, but Shepard was deadly serious about their mission. This was something with real consequences that would last beyond the next news cycle. "He won't get away this time, sir, you have my word."

The captain laid his hand briefly on her shoulder. "Good hunting, Commander."

She nodded, and started to brush by Udina to board the ship, but he stepped in front of her and looked up the long length of his nose. "You may be a spectre now, Commander Shepard, but your actions still reflect on humanity as a whole. You make a mess and I get stuck cleaning it up."

Her mouth turned up at one corner. "I'll take care of Saren. You take care of the political fallout."

"Not exactly the answer I was looking for."

"We all have our duty. Some days you're feted by the galactic Council, and other days you're digging latrine holes. Just how it goes." She clapped him on the back, harder than was necessary and causing him to stumble forward a step. "I'm sure we'll be talking soon."

He called after her as she opened the hatch, with real rancor. "Remember you were a human long before you were a spectre."

_Yeah, when I need a species check an old toad like Udina is definitely the first person I'll ask._ But apparently Citadel diplomacy was rubbing off on her, because she stepped aboard without offering any response.

Shepard turned right and immediately made her way to the CIC. Navigator Pressly saluted as she stepped up the galaxy map. "Commander. Ship is resupplied, all crew accounted for, and ready to move out on your order."

She nodded. "Good work."

He hesitated a moment. "I heard about Captain Anderson. A rotten bunch of bullshit, is what that is, if you don't mind me saying, ma'am."

It was odd to hear Pressly swear, but she merely shook her head. "It's not right. It's like I'm stealing the ship from him."

"It wasn't your fault, ma'am." He put his arms behind his back and gave her a steady nod. "But if he had to go, there's not a man aboard ship who isn't glad it's you taking his place."

"I've got our destination." She activated her omnitool and uploaded Anderson's coordinates to Pressly's terminal. "Artemis Tau. We're looking for an asari with some answers for us."

"Yes, ma'am." Pressly began programming the nav system.

Shepard turned towards the communications officer. "Open a channel. Ship-wide."

"Aye, ma'am." The woman's fingers danced over her keys. "Ready when you are."

Shepard took a moment leaning on the railing surrounding the map console, a few seconds to collect her thoughts. Then she looked up and took a breath. "Listen up, _Normandy_. This is your commander speaking. We have our orders- find Saren Arterius and make him answer for his crimes. He's betrayed his office and the people he swore to protect, a traitor to everything this galaxy stands for. I refuse to allow anything to get in the way of that mission."

She paused a half-second. By now, everyone in the CIC was staring at her intently. "We all know what happened on Eden Prime. We saw the destruction. We saw the bodies of our civilians and our marines. We saw what Saren did. I don't have the answers. I don't know what to say to make it any easier. But I say to you this- I plan to make him pay for every life of ours he took that day."

Her voice rose. "Wherever Saren goes, we'll follow. Wherever he searches for the Conduit, we'll be there. We will hunt him to the very ends of the Terminus and we _will _bring him down. Not just for our own sake, but for the sake of every other species in Citadel Space. Nobody will be safe until this mad dog is brought to heel, and I promise you- we can and we will stop him."

Her remarks were intended to focus her crew on their mission and what was at stake, to encourage them all to hang together as one team, but Shepard was shocked by the spontaneous applause that broke out in the CIC. She managed to nod, tersely, and turned to Pressly like that was exactly the response she expected. "Navigator, tell the helmsman he has his orders."

For the first time since they met, Pressly's salute appeared more than perfunctory. He started running the pre-flight check as she stepped down from the map and went to her own console to get to work.

Before long, they were pulling away from the Citadel and en route to the Artemis Tau cluster, and whatever plans of Saren's awaited.


	15. Chapter 15

_Plasma drenched the ground of a desert world. She could feel the heat rolling up from the cracked stones, washing the air with dusty steam, making it hard to make out anything. And she badly wanted a better view, because the noises were worse than the heat. Deep booms, like fog horns, interspersed with exploding earth and the occasional shout. If the screaming came as words, they weren't in her vocabulary, but these noises were primal, archaic, the kind of sound that endured the birth and death of language._

_There was nothing in her hands nor armor on her body as she stumbled through the dirty cloud. Rock and bones alike crunched under her bare and filthy feet. There was no will in her to fight, and that frightened her more than the carnage and chaos combined. She stumbled forward heedless of the scrapes and burns, with a single whisper in her mind: away, away, away._

Sheppard woke in the dark chill of the commander's cabin aboard the _SSV Normandy_ with her breath loud in her ears. She gulped down the tasteless, filtered air like she was suffocating. Her throat felt as raw as though it was real smoke she breathed, instead of a dream.

She sat up and searched blindly with her toes for her shoes. "Lights."

Immediately, the _Normandy _VI illuminated the cabin. Shepard pulled a shirt over her head and stood, rubbing the tired out of her face. She paced for a few minutes, working out the adrenaline and allowing her heart rate to settle back into normal range, until her muscles stopped twitching at every stray groan of her ship.

A glance at her terminal showed the time as three in the morning TCU. Though searching the Artemis Tau cluster for any sign of an asari scientist was about an unexciting as life on the final frontier got, she knew she ought to get back to sleep, so she'd be sharp regardless of what happened tomorrow.

There was still a taste of ashes in her mouth. She looked between the bed and the door. "Fuck this."

She walked out onto the crew deck, tousling her hair and yawning, and made her way to the mess.

There were packets of hot chocolate powder in a drawer- the kind without marshmallows, she was satisfied to note- and it was easy enough to throw a mug in the microwave. She stood at the counter and tapped her foot on the floor while she watched the seconds count down.

"Hey, commander." Alenko knelt next to her and started poking through the cabinet.

She shuffled her legs out of the way. "What the hell are you doing up?"

"Spent the evening sleeping off a headache, and now I'm not tired." He retrieved a bag of pretzels and tore it open. "You?"

"Woke up and couldn't get back to sleep." She started ransacking the cupboard for a spice rack.

He looked her over. Her exhaustion was obvious, from the redness in her eyes to clumsiness of her fingers as she tore at the paper packet. He cleared his throat. "I guess that explains the, uh, attire."

She glanced down, taking in her stained Alliance-issued undershirt, boxer shorts, and unlaced combat boots as if noting them for the first time, but remained unfazed. Shepard leaned against the counter, stirring her drink lazily. "It's three a.m. You want to report me for being out of uniform? I didn't make my bed either."

Alenko chuckled and shook his head. "No, ma'am."

"Damn right." Reaching up into the cabinet, she pulled down a jar, sprinkling it generously over the cocoa.

His nose twitched as the scent reached it. "Cinnamon?"

"My grandmother made it this way when I was a kid. I kinda got used to it." She inhaled the steam rising off the mug, and took a sip. Not as good as the real thing, of course, but not bad either. "I spent a lot of time there while my parents were out on deployments, until my grandparents passed, anyway. Then it was space stations and the occasional groundside base."

Apparently, sleepiness made her talkative. He felt a little guilty, keeping her up, but her mug wasn't even close to empty. "I was just reading at the table. I took a break to get a snack, but I wouldn't mind company if you're not planning to go back to bed."

After her unpleasant dreams, a bit of small talk having nothing to do with beacons, Protheans, reapers, or scorched-earth wars was very appealing. "That works for me."

They meandered over to the large area on the crew deck that served as a mess hall. Big enough to hold two-thirds of _Normandy's _crew during meals, it felt vast with only two chairs occupied. There was a worn paperback lying overturned and halfway open on the table. Alenko set the pretzels down and picked it up.

Shepard tipped her head to read the title. "_Nightfall_. That's a bit dark."

"Not the tenth time you read it. You know it?"

"Know it?" She was almost insulted. "I used to eat this shit breakfast, lunch, and dinner."

He rolled his eyes, not taking the bait. "I guess you get less time to read these days."

"It's true. I'm not usually stationed on a ship. I forgot how much down time there is." She sat back, balancing her heels on the edge of her seat, cradling the mug. "I probably should have bought something on the Citadel, but it didn't occur to me."

"Well, you weren't exactly hurting for things to do there." He closed the book and held it out. "It was in my bag when we left Mars. I've got others."

It was rare to see her surprised. She smiled a little half-smile of confusion and bemusement, and took the book. "Thank you."

Alenko thought it was a good look on her. He smiled back. "Any time."

"I know it's a little strange." She rested her chin in her hand. "I grew up in a version of the future these guys were trying to describe, but I still loved reading about it. It's like a history of a past that never was."

"No, I get it." He snagged another pretzel and toyed with it. "You grew up traveling the galaxy. I grew up on Jump Zero with a bunch of other biotic kids. It was like living in a zoo- we didn't even have extranet access. I got a taste for old books and movies. Sometimes I wonder if that's not part of the reason why I joined up. If you read enough stories about the great wandering hero saving the universe for the girl he loves, you start to kind of believe it."

"You're a romantic." Shepard was delighted.

"Nah. No." He blushed faintly. "Alright, maybe a little, in the beginning. It wore off fast."

She laughed. "So says you."

"So says me," he agreed. "Alright, then, commander, how about you? What drove you to enlist?"

"Family tradition," she answered immediately.

Maybe a little too immediately, because he leaned forward and said, "Now I know it's something good. What's the real reason?"

"Patriotism. Defending humanity." She wiggled her eyebrows. "Lots and lots of guns."

Alenko snorted. "Fine, don't tell me then. You might want to practice that a little more before you try it in public though."

"It's a terrible story." It was her turn to look away, embarrassed.

"I'm sure it can't be all that bad." He prodded her. "Come on, I'm not going to tell anyone."

Shepard sighed and rolled the mug between her palms. "When I was seventeen, I got into a bad situation. My mom extricated me by calling in a few favors and enlistment was her price. She told me that I could put my faith in the justice system or the military, but either way she was done trying to tame me."

Alenko digested that, and answered cautiously. She was staring into the cocoa. "Sounds like you caused your parents a lot of trouble."

"That's an understatement." Shepard had to laugh a little at her lengthy list of transgressions. "I was a belligerent snot, if we're being honest. Getting arrested was the final straw."

They sat there a moment, sipping and munching, before Alenko's curiosity got the better of him. "So, did you steal a car, or what?"

She cringed. "Close. Parts, not a whole vehicle. Ones my meager paycheck from hawking cheeseburgers couldn't stretch to cover."

Alenko's brow knitted. "Why?"

"A year before all this, I managed to wreck my dad's car, drag-racing on the planitia." She rolled her neck, working out a kink. "It was a small miracle I survived the accident, and then I was lost in the desert for almost two weeks. My father took away from the experience that clearly our relationship was a bit lacking, so he got this old fixer-upper to replace it, kind of a father-daughter project."

"Hence the theft." He sat back, satisfied. "My dad tried something similar when I got home. He started programming freelance and tried to get me interested in the business, but coding's never been my thing. I like computers, but I don't want to spend every day of my life sitting in front of one."

"See, I loved it. It was novel and active enough to hold my attention, unlike, say, school. I still remember the time we finally got the engine to turn on." Shepard smiled at the memory.

"Beats the hell out of crafting a database for dental patients." Alenko popped another pretzel in his mouth.

She watched him eat, nonplussed. "I figured you for the last person who'd take this calmly."

"I am shocked to find you may have made some poor life decisions when you were a teenager. That's so out of character for our species, after all." He was unfazed. "You know, the fact that you're this embarrassed about it says a lot about the last ten years."

"Eleven years."

"Eleven, then. It's probably ok to stop feeling ashamed about it now."

"You're probably right," Shepard replied, politely, though she was obviously less than convinced. For a moment it seems she would let the topic rest, drumming her fingers against the table, thinking, but then she laid her palm flat against it, and said, "My dad got banged up pretty bad when I was fifteen. He was one of the guys who got spaced on the _SSV Einstein_, if you remember that. It was a huge scandal back in the day."

"Yeah, I remember something about that." He was puzzled by the sudden change of topic, but went along with it. "It turned out the subcontractor execs were in bed with Alliance procurement, right?"

"Yep. One of the seals was shoddy, and vented the whole compartment. Turned out that wasn't the only corner cut on those birds." Shepard shook her head, disgusted. "Anyway, I got sent to live with dad. I thought it was a punishment, but some time later I realized that nobody was sure whether he'd be able to take care of himself. And all I did for three years was give him one headache after another, you know?"

"I bet he was proud of you when you signed up, regardless of why." Alenko didn't elaborate on why he believed this. There was a lot of history there he didn't want to delve into.

"Are you kidding me?" She laughed despite herself. "He frog-marched me to the recruiter's office himself, six a.m. April 11. Happy birthday Nathaly."

He grinned at the image. "It couldn't have been half as bad as basic, if you were really that much of a brat."

"Oh, god. You wouldn't believe it if I told you. I showed up with my hair still dyed bright blue, figuring that they'd dye it back some normal color. I was kind of enjoying the thought of how much extra work it would cause. Instead, the woman bent me over a trashcan and buzzed the whole lot of it off. Rude awakening number one."

His brow furrowed. "Wait, your hair was blue?"

"Yeah, for years, why?"

He got this little dimple between his eyebrows when he was thinking. Right now he seemed to be assembling pieces of a thought in his head. "The _Einstein_ disaster came right after they shut down the program on Jump Zero. Finally got the damn reporters off my parents' doorstep." Then he amended, rapidly, "Not that I meant I was glad your dad got hurt-"

She held up her hand. "Trust me, it's ok. The media's one giant hungry vulture. I don't much care what gets them off my back, either."

He nodded. "Anyway, I remember one broadcast. A reporter was camped out at the hospital, trying to give an update, but this blue-haired girl turning cartwheels in the background kept messing up her frame. It was hard to take her accusations against the Alliance seriously with that going on."

"Huh." Shepard frowned, trying to recall. "It could've been me. The first week was bad, but after we knew dad would survive, living out of a waiting room got old fast. I needed to move, so I went down to the hospital grounds and screwed around awhile. I had no idea there was video footage."

Then she grinned. "My blue hair must've made quite the impression. That was ages ago."

"That, or the way your t-shirt slid down a little farther every time you flipped upside down," Alenko said without thinking.

Shepard burst out laughing.

"I was eighteen," he protested, now bright red. "I had a sheltered childhood."

"I'll bet." She put her hand over her mouth in an attempt to contain a second spurt of laughter.

"I did," he insisted. "Hell, I don't even know _how _to turn a cartwheel. The ceilings in Jump Zero are too low, and we didn't get free time in the gym."

Shepard managed to regain control of herself. "Very smooth change of subject there, lieutenant."

He sat back and folded his arms ruefully. "You have an amazing talent for getting me to say things without thinking them through."

"It's good for you. You could do with some loosening up." Shepard snickered. "In fact, I think I'm going to teach you how to turn a cartwheel, the next time we're groundside."

Alenko felt he was rapidly losing any shred of control of the situation. "I'm fine living in the dark on that one."

"No, I insist. It's not that hard." Shepard drained the last of her hot chocolate. "And I'll, you know, make sure my shirt is firmly tucked in at all times, lest the sight of my bare stomach drive you to distraction."

He eyed her, trying to tell whether or not she was serious. She gave nothing away. "Good night, L.T."

"Good night, ma'am."

/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\

The remainder of the night passed without incident, with no ill dreams to disturb her, and by the time Shepard was showered and dressed, she'd cleared the last of the tired fog from her mind.

It began like every other day the past week. There were four Council-cartographer-mapped star systems in Artemis Tau, each with a half-dozen planets for an archaeologist aspiring to deadlier things to hide a shuttle. And Liara T'Soni could be anywhere. Even assuming she was in this cluster to dig, Prothean ruins were sprinkled across the systems like boulders on the planitia. The Protheans had a fondness for these worlds.

Joker was already on the bridge when Shepard arrived. She was beginning to suspect he slept there. "Lieutenant."

"Hey, Commander." And he even had the gumption to sound cheerful in spite of the frustration of their search. "Another fine day of scanning planets, coming right up."

"I tried to get in touch with the doctor's university for all the good that did. I don't have that many contacts on Thessia to begin with, and nobody wants to talk to me about this." Shepard sighed. "Whoever this Benezia is, Councilor Tevos wasn't mistaken about her influence."

"We'll find her," Joker reassured. "She can't hide forever."

_Unless she's moving from system to system. We're assuming she doesn't suspect we're coming. If she does, we'll never find her. We don't have a big enough net. _Aloud, however, Shepard remained optimistic. "Today could be the day. I have a good feeling about Therum."

"I have to disagree there, ma'am. Thorough is one thing, but Therum's a mining world. It's hotter than hell on the surface and I doubt an asari is able to wander among the workers without anyone taking notice."

Shepard shrugged. "Maybe she kept away from the mines. Or maybe she simply kept away from the Eldfell-Ashland executive I spoke with."

_That _woman had been less than useless. It was clear she didn't want the Alliance interfering with "her" world, much less the Council, and it didn't matter why. Shepard thought the Systems Alliance took the wrong tact with these kinds of planets. There was a government, but it existed in name only, secondary to the corporate interests that financed and controlled all activity on Therum. Parliament simply didn't have the funding to support colonies on marginal, if lucrative, garden worlds, and mostly looked the other way so long as the tax revenue flowed in a timely fashion.

She clapped Joker on the shoulder. "Well, you and survey team keep at it. Let me know if you find anything."

Shepard wandered down to engineering, suppressing a yawn. The lack of sleep was catching up with her, and the monotony wasn't helping. Engineering was cramped, crowded, but a good ways across the ship and down. Her legs needed the walk.

Engineer Adams saluted as she came on deck. If anything, he seemed more enthusiastic than before. The ship was outperforming everyone's expectations. "All systems report green, Commander. And I'm happy to report that the IES is operating a full thirty minutes longer than our dry dock tests promised."

"Someday you and I are going to sit down and have a long chat about the IES." Shepard understood the basic principle, but there remained some fundamental and rather obvious questions about the _Normandy's _stealth protections she wanted answered.

"Aye ma'am, just say the word." Adams turned back to his work.

Shepard approached the drive, circling it as much as the metal pipe railing would allow. It hummed in bass notes that strained the edges of her hearing. Joker complained about the balance of the ship- he bitched about everything, just as a matter of course- but the drive was truly massive. Shepard never saw the like.

"She's so quiet too," a voice marveled behind her, both admiring and nervous. Shepard turned to find Tali also gazing up at the drive core.

"I suppose she is." Shepard didn't notice much difference in volume between this and the other ships, but then the _Normandy _was tiny. Maybe it was more impressive in a small vessel.

The girl shook her head. "It's making it hard to sleep. On the flotilla, quiet means something on the ship broke- the drive, the air circulation. We don't have anything new enough to run like this."

"Air circulation?" Shepard's brow creased. "Your ships are atmospheric?"

Tali chuckled. "Yes. Our suits can seal off and act as a space suit, recirculating our air supply, for limited periods of time. But preferably we draw in fresh air, filtered well through the suit's apparatus. No space suit functions indefinitely. If we could design that, I doubt we'd be forced to purchase scrap yard ships."

"Well, I can always get the crew down here to bang a few wrenches against the bulkhead if it'll help." Shepard glanced at her sidelong, her mouth twitching at a corner.

That got another chuckle. "Thanks, but that won't be necessary. Actually, I wanted to speak with you about something I found."

"What's that?" Her interest was piqued. Mostly, Tali kept to herself, down on the engineering deck. She'd been quiet as a mouse since they left the Citadel. Adams told her the quarian's insights into the engines were beyond valuable, but of Tali herself, Shepard saw little.

"I started looking at some records." Tali seemed uncertain where to begin. "All this time we've assumed Dr. T'Soni would be hiding. If not from us, then generally, from her mother's enemies. I started to wonder if maybe she thought either nobody would look for her all the way out here, or maybe… I don't know."

"Tali, get to the point." It wasn't said unkindly, but the girl had a tendency to ramble that grated on Shepard's nerves.

"Right." She squared her shoulders. "If she wasn't trying to hide there would records of her arrival. Therum may be a backwater, but it is inhabited. There are protocols for landing. So I hacked into Eldfell-Ashland's docking records."

Shepard raised her eyebrows. "You can do that?"

"They're a mining company, Shepard." Tali sat back on her heels, folding her arms. "Their security protocols aren't top of the line."

"And you found…?"

The grin came through in her voice. "A shuttle landed here three weeks ago, registered to the University of Thessia, care of Liara T'Soni."

_And now I know the exec lied to me. _Shepard's own grin shared some broad qualities with that of a shark. "Good work. Do you know where she docked?"

The quarian nodded and pulled up a map on her omnitool. "Here, about a hundred klicks south of the capital. There's a huge mine there. Apparently, they found extensive ruins while they were excavating, two years ago. It was all over the news."

"I don't have much time for watching vids." Shepard ran her fingers through her hair and glanced at the ceiling. "Joker, we need to head for Mine No. 7."

The VI caught the name and change in tone, and broadcast her instruction to the bridge. A few moments later, Joker's response came back, anxious. "We can be there in twenty minutes, ma'am, but I'm looking at satellite surveillance. You're gonna want to see this."

"On my way." Shepard paused as she passed Tali, laying a hand on her shoulder. "Really, good work today. This is exactly the break we needed."

Tali practically glowed under the compliment. She didn't have a lot of faith in herself, without much apparent cause for the doubts. Shepard made a note of it.

Joker parsed the satellite relay into the comm room. Shepard reviewed the data while they continued their conversation. "This is from Eldfell-Ashland's satellites?"

"Yes, ma'am." He paused. "Are you seeing what I'm seeing?"

"Damn bastards," Shepard growled, unsure if it was directed more at the lying snakes of Eldfell-Ashland or the geth she clearly saw swarming the surface. "How could they expect to keep this a secret?"

"I don't know." The link went silent a moment, before Joker managed to shove some perk back into his voice. "Orders, ma'am?"

"It's too hot to land?"

"Affirmative. It's a mako drop or nothing."

Shepard made up her mind. "Tell Alenko and Williams to suit up while I inform the X.O. We're going in."


	16. Chapter 16

A Mako combat drop was how an Alliance pilot earned his pay while at the helm of a ship that largely flew itself.

Shepard, Alenko, and Williams piled nonchalantly into the roving tank and rolled down the chute into the glorified pocket that was the _Normandy SR-1's _shuttle bay. As she made her way into the Mako cabin, she noticed someone had hung a snapshot of Jenkins fooling around with two of the other marine grunts on the wall of the loading bay, by the suit checkpoint. Her fingers brushed it briefly, automatically, aware of the ritual positioning of the picture even as the cynical part of her doubted he had much luck to spare them.

Shepard was in the right-hand couch, where she could survey their trajectory and assess conditions to issue orders. Alenko was next to her, frowning a bit in concentration as he rushed through the check-out list while their ship made her final descent. Williams strapped in behind them for the drop, though once they were on the ground, she'd have to stand to man the gun. Shepard hoped her aim with an artillery rifle was as good as with hand-held weaponry.

The Mako was the Alliance's solution to putting small sorties into hot zones in rough terrain without endangering a whole ship. If the objective were simply to subdue the geth, the _Normandy's _guns could handle the problem from orbit. Her only objective was to locate and extract Dr. T'Soni. This wasn't a full-scale invasion like Eden Prime, full of friendlies and civilians. Today, Shepard didn't care about the machines. If Eldfell-Ashland wanted to keep their pest problem to themselves, they were welcome to it.

The _Normandy _was required to accelerate as Joker left orbit and dipped her belly into the thin, screaming winds of the upper atmosphere. The dampeners could mask the vibrations, but nothing could conceal the sound, as a plasma sheath engulfed their ship and tested her ceramic paint skin to the limit.

Just past the nadir of their dive, the rear hatch opened, and the Mako rolled out onto thin air. The sound died away almost instantaneously and the _Normandy _receded. It was one of the few situations where modern space-faring Alliance experienced free fall, as they dangled in their seatbelts while their tiny vessel inscribed a parabola across Therum's sky.

That phase lasted scant seconds, until they'd fallen to under thirty kilometers, when the Mako's undersized momentum dampeners kicked in. This keystone of mass effect technology made the drop possible. A few seconds further, the retrorockets fired, jerking them hard into their couches, a relatively gentle two g's after the dampeners cancelled all they could. Their speed slowed from an apocryphal speeding bullet to a mere blur.

At ten thousand feet, the rockets cut out. At five, the wheels unlocked. They hit the ground with a full thirty g's of force, reduced to a still-unpleasant five, rolled a hundred meters, and came to a stop within sight of two startled geth sentries. Joker put them exactly where Shepard pointed on the keyhole satellite images while lashing together a plan for the mission.

Williams was out of her seat instantaneously after they made planetfall. The gun swung around and sighted on the nearest of the pair of geth. "Ma'am?"

"Fire at will. We're not exactly hidden." Shepard nodded at Alenko. "Joker hit the bullseye. The main concentration of ruins is five klicks northwest."

"Roger that." He steered away from the sentries, gaining speed, while Williams continued to track them with their main gun. She fired a salvo that reduced the first to a smoldering heap of twisted metal, but was forced to combat its friend with smaller rounds as the Mako slowly recycled the heavy ammunition setting. The tank rocked as the geth returned fire.

Alenko glanced at the instruments and gave them a little more speed. "Shields holding."

"Hostiles neutralized," Williams announced, with more glee than Shepard liked to hear. Including her on this mission was questionable, but her skill was undeniable and it set her apart from the rest of the grunts aboard ship- so long as she could keep her head. Eden Prime was going to continue provoking her thirst for vengeance for awhile.

Therum wasn't a garden world in the glossy-brochure sense. It was hot as hell, the ground raw volcanic rock unsuited for farming, and a lazy river of exposed lava from the nearby volcanic arc defined their path as it wound slowly downhill to a cooling lake of molten rock. Shepard kept a close eye on the ground before them, wary of sinkholes. The rotten-egg scent of sulfur pervaded the cabin.

The Mako bumped and shambled along. Shepard tried not to grit her teeth with every jounce. Instead, watched the ladar. "More hostiles in-bound."

"I see them." Alenko swung the Mako around. In the back, Williams tensed on the trigger.

The geth were crowded behind makeshift barricades, little more than sheet metal plates bolted together, but it blocked line of sight. As they barreled downhill, the Mako began to swerve, while their artillery lay down a barrage of cover fire.

"Oh, for fuck's sake-" Shepard was cut off as her helmet slammed against the bulkhead.

"Should've worn the seat belt." Alenko kept his concentration on the controls. The geth were returning fire. It sounded like hail on their roof.

"Or you should try driving straight."

He leaned into the next turn. "Procedure states to orient the vehicle forward to present the smallest possible target and vary course to make it harder to track."

Shepard finally managed to grab a cross strut to brace herself. "Just run them over."

That got his attention. "Say again?

"Those barricades are screwing us over. Run them down. Don't mistake it for a suggestion."

Alenko shook his head in disbelief. "Yes, ma'am."

He gunned the engine. They flew at the barricade, Williams pouring bullets into the fortifications.

As they got close, Shepard said, "Kill the gun. We're putting shrapnel into our own shields."

True to her orders, Alenko didn't slow as they rammed the metal wall and crushed the two geth still crouched behind it. One of them bucked, once, but throwing the Mako into reverse solved that problem. The remainder were all casualties of Williams' aim.

"Good," Shepard said into the sudden silence following the end of the fighting. "Let's keep moving."

Alenko and Williams exchanged a glance, before Alenko rolled his eyes and shifted back into forward. There was a high-pitched grinding sound from the rear of the vehicle. "Wheel's stuck, Commander."

Her turn for an eye-roll. "Move over."

He relinquished the controls readily. When the commander was like this, there was no point in arguing. He slid across into the opposite couch while Shepard squeezed in front of him along the windshield. Alenko covertly fastened his seat belt and began to adjust the instrumentation more to his liking.

Meanwhile, Shepard started rocking the Mako back and forth, easing the wheel free of the debris. She let out a whoop as it popped loose and they went flying a good twenty feet forward.

"Ow," Williams said from behind them, rubbing her forehead where it whacked the gun sight.

"Hang on." Shepard eased onto the accelerator. "Here we go."

They jounced across the surface of Therum. Alenko checked their position against the _Normandy's _triangulation. "Turn five degrees south."

The front wheel skidded over a boulder as she executed the course adjustment, too low to see from high up in the cabin, causing the Mako to tilt alarmingly and nearly overturn before the inertial adjustor caught it. Shepard swore.

"Doesn't exactly corner like your Fire Starter?" Alenko asked dryly.

She straightened out the vehicle. "Go to hell."

"Is that an order, ma'am?" He glanced at the ladar. "Looks like four… no, five more contacts, coming up fast."

Williams squinted through her sights. "At least one of them is a big guy. Heavy artillery."

"Roger." Shepard grinned and increased speed. "Brace yourselves."

She drove straight up their belly, holding course against the onslaught while Williams pounded them with the Mako's cannon. The geth held their ground. Shepard didn't know if they had any sense of self-preservation, or maybe their software had a way of living on that was independent of their platform. Maybe it was only that if there was a single task at which computers excelled, it was following orders. But those flashlight heads didn't so much as flicker as the Mako closed fifteen meters, ten, five.

Shepard froze the front wheel and slid the entire rear half of the Mako into the right flank of the entrenched geth. Two went flying and landed prone some five meters further down. Williams used the machine gun to make quick work of them. Releasing the wheel and tapping the accelerator drove the Mako over a fourth. It clattered against the vehicle's armor plating.

Shepard gave Alenko a smug look. "Don't tell me I can't drive."

His mouth turned up at one corner. "I never said you couldn't crash with style."

The cabin rocked as they were hit by a heavy salvo. The first layer of the Mako's shielding shivered and died. Williams returned fire. "Still one heavy out there, ma'am!"

"I know." Shepard brought the Mako around. "Not going to be able to run that one down."

"Yeah, and you need to stay back or I won't be able to see it to target."

_Wasn't born yesterday, Chief. _But she bit back the retort. "Just make sure you take it down."

"Aye aye, ma'am." Williams' aim was excellent, regardless of the weapon used. A natural soldier. Anderson was right to give her a chance, despite the trauma and the attitude. Nobody could teach talent.

Shepard glanced over her shoulder at the chief. "Someday you're going to tell me what happened."

"Pardon, ma'am?" Williams reset the cannon as they moved forward, past the remains the geth.

She raised her voice over the rumble of the Mako. "Why it took so long for you to get on a ship."

"You don't know?" The chief's surprise was genuine.

"You're way too good for it to be all that mouth of yours."

It might have been her imagination, but Williams seemed to actually blush. "Thank you, ma'am."

It got her a smile from Alenko too, approving. Well, it was his leadership style. Maybe it merited a little approval.

They proceeded to the mine in much the same fashion, with Shepard abusing the Mako as a melee weapon, Williams taking out anything that stood still for more than a few breaths, and Alenko calling out directions and targets. Shepard could use ladar and triangulation and the rest of it, but the instrumentation positively danced in Alenko's hands. He knew how it worked and how to make the most of each data feed. All in all, it made for a very good team.

The Mako descended into an ancient valley scattered with outcrops of rock that didn't look natural to Shepard's eyes, though she couldn't say if it was the mining operation or something earlier. A narrow, winding path down to the floor forced them to abandon the Mako and travel on foot. Shepard was fine with that- it made her more comfortable anyway. She liked the feel of a rifle in her hands and old lava flows crunching under her boots.

The geth were entrenched along the hill leading up to the modern mine. So far, the Alliance incursion remained undetected, though the geth were clearly on alert. Groups of two to three machines guarded strategic turns all the way up the easiest path from the valley floor. Briefly, Shepard pondered sneaking past the synthetics' defenses, perhaps by scaling the more difficult western wall, but she didn't like the odds. If they were spotted- and she had no idea what kind of detectors the geth carried as standard equipment- they'd be caught almost entirely without cover.

She had to shake her head. Clearly, Alenko wasn't the only one still contemplating Jenkins' death. The trio was crouched behind a large, square outcrop, her squad looking to her for orders.

Shepard switched out her gun for a sniper rifle. The weapon unfolded silently, seamlessly, all of the well-oiled parts slipping into place like it was fresh out of the box. "Cover me."

They moved into position. She spent a moment wondering if a head or body shot would prove more effective against machines, then picked a target, and fired.

The lucky guess was correct. One machine fell. The commander ducked back into cover not a moment too soon, as the geths' rapid integration protocols accurately reconstructed the trajectory back to its source, and opened fire on their location. Chips of rock and other shrapnel from stray shots filled the air, stinging her cheek.

Alenko and Williams returned in kind. Shepard recycled the rifle- the intense range and impact power caused it to overheat quickly- and once more took aim, at one of the enemy combatants high up the hill, past the range of an assault rifle. It fell into the dirt and slid down into a cluster of its companions. Shepard scuttled left along her cover and prepared another shot.

"They're trying to flank us!" Williams was making the geth pay for every inch of terrain, but was becoming rapidly overwhelmed by numbers. Alenko scrambled to shore up defenses on her side. Shepard let off one final shot with the sniper rifle before taking up his former position, covering the center and west. The geth leaked some kind of milky fluid when they became disabled, slickening the ground beneath their bodies and releasing a noxious stench into the air as it hit the hot earth. It bore some small resemblance to omni-gel.

_Tali would know_, she thought, as she mowed down another machine. A part of her mind was wholly focused on the battlefield, taking in every detail, calculating shots, predicting the future in ten-second intervals, but as strategy went this was fairly basic. Another compartment of her mind was wandering, almost bored. Shepard knew how dangerous that could be, but so far it hadn't stopped her. Some days it felt like she'd been doing this too long.

At last, the gunfire died and they carefully stuck their heads out, surveying the hill. A quick scan with an omni-tool confirmed all enemy units down. Shepard shook the dust out of her hair. "Come on. They'll have reinforcements inbound. We need to get to that mine."

They made their way up the hill. As they neared where satellite recon said the mine should be, the path became cluttered with shipping crates, idled equipment, and other tools. The silence was disquieting.

Alenko looked around. "Where are all the miners?"

"Not sure we want to know." Shepard was grim. "But the geth sure didn't go to any effort to hide the bodies on Eden Prime."

Williams shuddered. "At least there aren't any of those… spikes."

"Dragon's teeth, the news is calling them." Alenko didn't seem to approve. "Fancy name for an ugly thing. Makes them seem less real."

Shepard agreed it was a stupid name, but this place set her teeth on edge. "Stay focused. I doubt we've seen the last of the geth for today."

They crept from cover to cover, moving deeper into the site. It was all but abandoned.

"This isn't right, Commander." Alenko pointed at a cart. "Machinery lying in the middle of the road, tools out. Nothing's put away. It's like they walked away for a minute and never came back."

"Maybe they retreated into the mine when they saw geth inbound." Privately, Shepard doubted it. This place didn't have the kind of hopeful air to it that spelled survivors. There was a large gap between their position and the next crate. She raised her gun to ready and signaled for the group to move up.

As they were walking, there was a distinctly metallic chink followed by a soft sound, like a clump of snow sliding to the ground. Williams peered ahead. "What was that?"

Shepard was already moving when the red laser shot out and painted Williams' chest. The shot didn't miss. The chief was tossed flat on her back by the impact, as her mass effect shield shuddered and died, leaving her lying in the open.

Alenko was pinned down across the way by the cover fire that immediately followed the sniper shot, the geth apparently stealing a play from Shepard's book. It would've been funny under other circumstances. Shepard got her arm hooked under the dazed woman's shoulder and shot back as she dragged her to cover, with only cursory aim to make them think twice about moving in on a wounded target.

That didn't stop them from shooting at her. Her own shield died one step from their cover, and a bullet tore a nice gouge through her shoulder plating. The sudden jolt caused her to almost drop Williams. Luckily, by then the chief shrugged off the surprise attack, and managed to scramble behind the crate under her own power.

Shepard lay back against the cart full of ore, cursing her stupidity, and prodded her shoulder. Her fingers came back wet. "Shit."

Further exploration revealed torn suit webbing at the armor join and a wound that sucked at her fingertips. She swore again.

Williams was returning fire over the top of the cart. She crouched down to let her weapon cool and glanced at her commander. "Ma'am?"

"Even geth get lucky sometimes." Shepard drew her hand away and started priming the medigel dispenser in her suit arm. "Just keep shooting."

A solid slather of medigel packed into the wound should stop the bleeding, but that was about it. Shepard would have to live with the injury until they got back to the ship. At least it wasn't her dominate arm. Still, even using it to brace against the assault rifle's kickback was enough to make her gasp. It didn't _feel _like a bullet wound, exactly; maybe a bit of ceramic shrapnel from her armor. Whatever it was, Shepard would lay money it was still buried in her flesh.

It was a small irony that the very thing she feared going forward in the mission may have saved their lives in that moment. Not bracing properly for the gun caused her line of vision to extend upwards, just for a moment, which is how she spotted the oily sheen of a silver geth unit unlike any she'd ever seen. It was clinging to the underside of a strut, reminding her of a gecko with its spread fingers and toes, and craning head. As she watched, it focused a crimson tracing beam on Alenko's position from its familiar flashlight snout.

Shepard fired into it without thinking. The thing moved like a liquid, vanishing in an eye-blink. There was no evidence any of her burst of fire hit. Across the way, Alenko was looking at her like she'd lost her mind.

"Damn it!" She was forced back into a crouch by another of the geth, using a more conventional attack. "They've got some kind of stealth unit- and it climbs."

It reappeared against the far wall of the facility, slithering upwards. Alenko sent a wave of energy at it, trying to knock it down, but it broke over the unit in a wash of blue ripples. "Shielded too."

He started firing at it instead. It leapt a solid three meters along the wall. Shepard let loose a steady hail of bullets, trying to follow its movements, but the thing was just so _fast_. It left even her superb reflexes dizzy.

Alenko squatted, setting his rifle across his lap and fiddling with his omni-tool. Shepard hoped he knew what he was doing. Pretty soon this geth was going to figure out that it could close on the three marines with near-impunity. Geth units had a minimum of a foot of height on any of them, were made of metal, and didn't tire. Shepard did not rank them highly as desired fist-fight opponents.

Just as it was tensing to leap away, yet again, a shower of sparks burst from its body as its shield blew out. It twitched and lost its grip. Shepard wasted no time, holding the trigger down until her rifle overheated. It lay still, that milky fluid running out in rivulets towards the valley, smoking slightly.

She took a heavy breath. Her shoulder was throbbing, not quite painful enough to disable her, not quite painless enough to forget for even a second. "Is that the last of them?"

Williams took a final shot. A geth fell out from behind a crate. "I think so- yes, ma'am."

They slowly rose, shaking off the ambush , and proceeded cautiously into the compound. Shepard packed more medigel into her shoulder as they walked. Alenko gave her a glance. "You ok?"

"Fine." She hissed involuntarily as her fingers encountered a particularly sensitive spot, and amended her statement. "It's not serious. It can wait until we're finished here."

His brow remained furrowed, but he didn't further voice his concerns. Instead, he nodded towards a sheet metal ramp. "I think that leads into the mine."

He drew his pistol as they approached. Any fighting down there was going to be close quarters, not cover fire over open swaths of terrain, and he was better with the smaller, slower weapon. Shepard paused to listen as they arrived at the first gate along the tunnel down into the earth, listening.

Williams' eyes darted around the passage, clearly uneasy. "Ma'am, are you sure it's a good idea to go hundreds of meters underground this close to volcanic activity?"

"If it's safe enough for the miners." Shepard shrugged. "This is a horrible place to work. Most of the people here didn't have many other options. I'm not going to let the dangerous environment stop me from helping them when they do this every day."

Williams bit her lip, chagrined. "I wasn't saying that."

"We need to find T'soni. But if we give these geth the boot in the process, I'm not going to complain."

Alenko worked the lock on the gate. "At least we know she has to be here. The geth wouldn't be here in force randomly. And maybe we'll find out what happened to the miners, too."

There were a handful of geth guards waiting to greet them, but nothing like the force arrayed on the surface. The three marines dispatched them quickly. Shepard continued down the ramp. "I think I see the service elevator at the end of this cavern."

"Not just that." Alenko peered ahead. "There's some kind of… structure."

As they drew closer, it became clear there was some manner of ruin hidden in the mine. Or, at least, Shepard could find no other word to describe an oval chamber of unknown architecture buried underground. It looked virtually untouched by the ravages of time, but strange, alien, in a way asari or turian styles never felt.

And there was some kind of active barrier preventing access. Shepard prodded it with her gloved hand.

"It looks like somebody's bathroom tile," Alenko observed, unpoetically.

The two women raised their eyebrows. He shrugged. "Well, it does."

"Not many bathrooms come equipped with their own military-grade barriers," Shepard remarked dryly, checking the data from her omni-tool. The numbers it was giving her were off the charts.

Williams snickered. "Now I KNOW you've never had a groundside assignment in your life."

That got a chuckle. Shepard shook her head, bemused despite the gravity and strangeness of their predicament. "Come on. Let's go down to the main level and see if we can find a way in. I'd bet a month's pay this is why the doctor came."

They piled into the elevator. It took a few tries, but eventually lurched into motion, descending rapidly into the earth. Williams went to the rail. "Dare you to spit over the side."

Shepard took a good look at the rough-hewn rock streaming past. "No bet."

The elevator shuddered to a halt with virtually no warning, throwing them all to the ground. It was just as well, because a pair of geth rocket drones immediately took note of the intruders and began assaulting the elevator carriage.

"Can't get a single break," Shepard complained, as they worked together to bring them down.

"Where there's drones, there'll be geth," Alenko remarked with grim certainty.

Williams pointed with her rifle. "There's another one of those bathroom things, down there where the path collapsed."

Indeed, there was a large section of the suspended sheet-metal bridge that allowed clear navigation of the mine that looked like it'd seen heavy fighting. It was twisted in on itself and all but fallen to the floor. Behind it, partially obscured by the debris, was another barrier and tile wall.

Shepard picked her way down to the lower chamber. As she straightened after the final fall and got a good look at the ruin for the first time, she stopped dead in her tracks, causing Alenko to almost collide with her. "What-"

His gaze followed hers. In the center of the chamber, behind the barrier, floated a blue-skinned asari dressed in lab gear. Her arms and legs waved awkwardly about her body, as though she was trapped underwater. Shepard took a step forward. "What in the hell-"

The asari's large blue eyes darted frantically until they landed on Shepard, pleading and panicked. "Can you hear me out there? I'm trapped! I need help!"


	17. Chapter 17

"Can anyone hear me? Hello?" The asari squirmed within the containment field, but the effort was futile. She had an unusual look for an asari- discolored facial markings scattered like freckles across her cheeks and nose, a bit taller and stouter in build, and wearing a shade of bubblegum pink lipstick that didn't do much for her in terms of human aesthetics. Her green and white lab tunic was grimy, particularly the gloves. Not exactly a hands-off approach to her work, then. Her arms and legs were stretched out from her body like an insect pinned to a display case.

Shepard approached the barrier as the asari made to cry out again. "Keep it down. This place is crawling with geth."

She swallowed. "Right. I'm sorry."

Those huge blue eyes kept darting around like a trapped animal. Some kind of black marks, maybe scars or tattoos, above her eyes bore an uncanny resemblance to human eyebrows. On a hairless asari, they were distracting. She took a few deep breaths, calming herself.

Shepard brushed aside the strangeness of the situation and composed herself. "Dr. T'soni?"

"Yes?" There was something almost naïve in that contralto voice, a mixture of desperation and embarrassment that belied any rumor that she might be a lieutenant in Saren's cause. "Who are you?"

"I'm Commander Shepard, with the Alliance." She rubbed her eyes. "How did you get…"

She gestured at the trap. If asari could blush, this one was doing so. "When the geth arrived, I was exploring the ruins. This may be one of the largest Prothean sites discovered in modern times. Most everything still works- there's so much we can learn from this place."

"So you activated the barrier curtains and got… stuck?"

"I must have hit something I shouldn't. I'm afraid I panicked." Dr. T'soni was chagrined. "Can you imagine? Geth out from behind the veil. And they came here? Why?"

Her body shuffled in the containment field as though she was subconsciously trying to pace. Shepard exchanged glances with her squad. This was nothing like what they expected, but in light of the other possibilities, it could be worse. There was a chance the asari was disingenuous but Shepard's gut said the confusion and anxiety were unfeigned. "Doctor, are you aware that your mother is working with the geth and helped orchestrate the attack on Eden Prime?"

"What?" Her eyes flew wide. "You can't be serious."

"Unfortunately, I am. I'm sorry to be the one to bring you this news."

"I… I don't know what to say. Benezia has always been so… independent." The asari bit her lip. "We've been fighting, actually. I've not spoken with her in years."

Shepard's brow furrowed. "Then why did she buy you an apartment on Thessia?"

"It was for herself. She's a frequent guest at the university. She left me a message saying I could use it when she wasn't in town, but I ignored it." She sucked in her breath. "Wait, you don't think I had anything to do with this?"

"One way or another, doctor, you had everything to do with this." Shepard started feeling her way along the barrier, looking for a weakness.

Alenko joined her while Williams began to patrol their perimeter, looking for stray geth. He glanced at the asari. "They probably had orders to either kill you or drag you back to Saren to help with the Conduit. Commander, we've got to get her out of here."

"I know. Preferably before the geth come back." She looked over at T'soni. "Any ideas?"

"Shutting off the containment field would be simple if I could reach the controls. If you can find a way around the barrier curtain-"

"Commander," Williams called out, something urgent in her voice. "I think you need to see this."

"Right." She drew her gun again and started out.

T'soni thrashed in her bonds. "Don't leave me here!"

"Don't worry." Despite herself, Shepard was soothing the asari. There was no proof of anything yet, and as a species asari were known for suave diplomacy, the ability to be convincing with their words. But every instinct she had believed this rather strange woman was a victim of circumstance, and a frightened one at that. "We're coming back for you."

She climbed over the rubble and descended to the mine floor, her shoulder screaming protests all the way. The hard tables in the _Normandy's _medbay and the tiny cups of painkillers Chakwas kept in her cabinets were beginning to hold some appeal. "What have we got, Chief?"

"I don't know how to say it." She was staring into a metal hemi-cylindrical shelter erected within the mine to provide employees a place to retreat from the dust and noise. Her face was white as a sheet.

Shepard glanced inside, then rubbed her face, defeated. "Great. That's just… perfect."

Alenko paled. "Oh, god."

They found the miners. Someone herded them into the shelter and gunned them down, from the look of things after the door was locked shut. The sides were riddled with bullet holes. Williams confirmed the story. "I had to kick in the door. What kind of machine does this? I don't care if they're synthetics, these miners were no threat to anyone."

"It's no use speculating." Shepard sighed and gently shut the door. There was no reason anyone needed to stumble on this by accident. They'd contact what passed for Therum's government on the way out, though Shepard's hopes were less than high for a compassionate or even rational response from the colony's CEO.

Alenko was still processing the scene. "No, Commander, she's right. This isn't something the geth would do. It's not their M.O."

"Have you seen anyone here who isn't geth, or dead?"

"Other than Dr. T'soni, no." He looked away. "I want to believe she's been blindsided by all this, but she's still Benezia's daughter. You really think things are that bad between them?"

"I don't get along so well with my mother either," Shepard said, but the words were empty. "Come on. There's nothing more we can do here, and we've still got to get T'soni out, whatever she is."

She turned to leave the scene. After a few paces, she looked over her shoulder and found her squad still lingering over the carnage. Her injury stabbed through her with a sharp, sudden pain at the simple motion, and she winced, her mouth thinning into a tight line. "They're gone. Unless you're withholding the secret to resurrection, we need to _keep moving_. That's an order."

They gave the pierced and broken shelter a final glance. Alenko swallowed, visibly burying his disgust and outrage over the deaths, and nodded. "Aye, ma'am."

He prodded Williams. She afforded Shepard an incensed glare, the price of insensitivity, but she followed along behind and kept her gun up.

A part of Shepard wished she could share their disaffection, that she wasn't quite so inured to these situations or quite so good at shutting them out. It felt sometimes like she was missing an essential part of human experience, though five years was long enough that she had difficulty remembering any other way. But that faint regret wasn't as large as the part of her that wanted to get her crew and her objective safely extracted from this pit.

She cleared her throat, gruffly. "Any ideas how to shut down the barrier?"

Her squad stared at her. She ran a hand over her hair, frustrated, ignoring that problem in favor of the one she could fix. "No, that's the wrong way to think about it, isn't it? All the controls will be inside and nothing short of the _Normandy's _main cannon is going to breach it by force. So if we can't go through it…"

Her gaze fell on a piece of abandoned mining equipment. She hurried towards it, checking the power supply. "Maybe we can go around it."

Williams' brow furrowed. "Is that some kind of excavator?"

"Mining laser, from the look of it." Shepard tried the controls. "Locked, of course."

"Let me take a look." Alenko held his omni-tool up to the machine and started feeding information back and forth.

Shepard peered back along the length of the mine to where T'soni remained trapped by the containment field. _What do the geth want with you? _Saren was clearly interested in Prothean artifacts. The Conduit could be another of those. It could be he thought an archaeologist would know how to locate it, or process the evidence he collected regarding its whereabouts, like the information from the beacon. Or it could be simpler- Benezia might want her daughter's help and approval, forcibly if necessary. It sounded like she hadn't given up on the relationship despite T'soni's disinterest.

_And isn't that just like mothers, never putting you first and then expressing surprise when you give them the same treatment back. _Hannah Shepard was not a bad mother by anyone's definition. Shepard knew she loved her, in her own way, but her career was her real passion. Neither her husband nor her daughter had any illusions about that.

Alenko made one last adjustment and the panel went green. "The laser is online, Commander."

"Point it under the busted walkway. Let's see if we can tunnel into those ruins."

"Right away, ma'am." The machine rotated slowly, to the left and down. "You might want to cover your ears."

There was no blast wave, but it was bone-achingly loud. The laser bored a pattern of melt holes through the rock, weakening it and causing it to collapse along natural flaws, leaving behind a trail of rubble waiting to be scooped into carts. Shepard's guess was correct. The ruins continued down into the floor of this shaft, and the laser found a hollow chamber behind the rock. Alenko kept the laser going until the hole was large enough to squeeze through.

It was an impatient few minutes waiting for the laser traces to cool sufficiently for their hardsuit boots, but soon enough the squad was pressing into the ruins. They were right of the bathroom-tile apertures that repeated on every level of the structure, the proper entrances, and so their laser avoided the barrier curtain altogether. An elevator waited in the central shaft, and it was quick work to convince it to send them up one level.

T'soni heard them approach from behind. "Excellent! Goddess, I am so ready to be free of this cell."

Shepard glanced around, but didn't see any obvious means of disabling the field. "How do we get you out?"

"That terminal." The asari nodded over her shoulder. "I'll walk you through the procedure. It's quite simple."

A few moments later, Dr. T'soni was rubbing circulation back into her arms, which had been held stretched out to each side for far too long. "I can't thank you enough. How did you get around the barrier?"

"Superior firepower." Shepard grinned despite herself.

Williams was less amused, her tone flat. "We found a mining laser."

"I see. Yes." T'soni rubbed her wrist, flexing her fingers. "That was clever. How do you propose we leave the mine?"

Shepard tapped her fingers against her suit. "The service elevator's shot. If you can disable the barrier curtain, we can take this elevator up through the ruins and exit there."

"Of course." She tapped out a few commands on the Prothean terminal. The curtain fell away without a sound or shiver of protest. "But we need to be careful. The geth have a leader- a krogan. He's been coordinating their attacks."

"We haven't seen any krogan." Shepard exchanged a glance with her squad, thinking about the dead miners. That sort of tactic was, unfortunately, representative of organics, and the krogan weren't known for their merciful natures.

"He's here," T'soni said grimly. "He stopped by to taunt me several times. I am grateful you thought to use the laser before the idea occurred to him."

Williams jerked her thumb towards the mine. "Think what happened back there was his idea?"

"Probably." Shepard rubbed her forehead.

T'soni glanced from face to face. "What is it?"

Williams looked away. Alenko took a breath before answering. "Someone herded all the workers into a shelter, and turned them into hamburger with a machine gun."

The asari blanched. "Goddess. I'm so sorry."

Shepard avoided Williams' sudden vindicated glare following this expression of empathy, and retreated to the elevator. She got on the comm and let Joker know the threat was neutralized, and uploaded their coordinates for extraction. The elevator ascended smoothly to the top of the mine.

A welcome party was waiting for them as soon as they cleared the floor. She immediately held up a hand to stop her squad from doing anything rash.

There was a krogan at the head of squad of geth, arrayed around a quarter-arc of the circular elevator platform. He was grinning. Shepard's experience with krogan was limited, but this one seemed larger, and… off, somehow, in a way she couldn't put her finger on. Too large, his movements almost clumsy, not typical of a natural hunter.

Whatever difficulties the krogan possessed, none of them stopped his mouth. "Heh. Thought you'd make a clean getaway. This is the end of the line."

"I don't have time for this bullshit." She made a dismissive gesture. "We're leaving. If they try to slow us down, shoot them."

The krogan's grin was fierce. "Good. I like it better this way."

There was no time to think as they opened fire. Shepard dove for a pillar that offered partial cover, her shoulder screaming complaints which she promptly ignored. She braced the butt of her rifle against the Prothean architecture and started working her way around the circle. The geth spread out, trying to flank them, a strategy that was likely to prove successful.

One fell. Shepard moved to the next. "Protect our edges!"

Williams was firing past her, at the geth working its way around to her pillar. Alenko stayed with Dr. T'soni, who was huddled behind the elevator console, shielding both of them as best he could while taking pot shots at the krogan. As she watched, the krogan threw back his head and yelled some kind of war cry, before charging down the middle.

Shepard switched targets instantly and took out the krogan's knee. He collapsed with a howl, just before Alenko's throw slammed him on his back. She was about to shoot again when an almost savage ball of pure dark energy raked him from neck to pelvis. The krogan twitched and was still.

Shepard frowned. That wasn't something in Alenko's repertoire. Dr. T'soni was biting her lip, just now withdrawing the hand extended towards the dead krogan, and Shepard raised her eyebrows. Maybe the asari had a spine after all.

Without their leader, the geth were disorganized and easily dispatched. The squad regrouped at the exit from the ruins. Shepard got back on the comm. "Joker, you here yet?"

"ETA five minutes, Commander."

"Fine. We'll be right-" She was interrupted as the whole shaft suddenly shook, forcing her to grab at the railing to stay upright. "What the hell was that?"

T'soni's eyes flew wide. "The laser. You must have undermined the stability of this area."

Shepard swore and started running. "Joker, we need out of here ASAP!"

His voice crackled with irritation. "I'm moving as fast as I can."

They raced through the mine, which was trembling violently now, and stinking of redolent sulfur. Shepard paused at the gate and waved the others past her. "Go, go, go!"

As she watched, the far walkway buckled and fell into the depths of the mine. For a split second all she could do was stare in wonder and disbelief. There was something awesome in the terrifying power of earth and gravity, still so much greater than anything in humanity's arsenal, an uncaring enemy they couldn't fight and could barely contain with careful engineering.

The path shuddered continuously, the rumble deafening. She heard a shout from up ahead, jerking her out of her daze. The survival instinct took over and she was running after her squad and the doctor, straining to outpace the destruction nipping at her heels.

They blew out of the shaft in a great cloud of dust, coughing and wheezing, but they made it. Shepard bent double trying to catch her breath. "Everyone ok?"

There was a chorus of "yes, ma'ams" and a relieved nod from T'soni. Her glance returned to the sky. "Where the hell is my ship?"

Alenko, on the other hand, was staring at the ground. "Commander, I don't think we're out of the woods yet."

Whole patches of rock were starting to collapse in spreading sinkholes as the mine beneath gave way. The metal scaffolding on which they stood lurched alarmingly. Shepard pressed her hand to her ear. "JOKER!"

"I'm here, I'm here!" The _Normandy _all but fell out of the sky, so fast was her descent, and the shuttle bay popped open.

"Move!" Shepard hardly needed to give the order. They got T'soni on board, and swiftly climbed on after. As soon as the final pair of boots touched the floor, the hatch snapped closed and the _Normandy _streaked away from the deteriorating terrain.

The four of them managed to drag themselves into the main compartment of the lower deck before collapsing against a wall, taking deep breaths. Shepard managed to remember just in time. "Joker, our Mako's still out there, beyond the valley. If it's not too dicey we need to retrieve it."

"Aye, ma'am, already on my way."

"Good." She leaned back and closed her eyes.

Another voice came on the comm. Pressly. "Ma'am, we're registering volcanic activity over the mine."

Her eyes flew open. "We started a _volcano_?"

"Hard to say, but it sure looks like it."

T'soni was bereaved. "I'd hoped it was only an earthquake. Even Prothean construction won't withstand magma flows. All of that knowledge just… just gone."

Alenko tried to be optimistic. "It's a huge loss, but at least you're ok, and the geth are gone."

"I suppose you're right." The asari sighed and got to her feet, brushing dust from her tunic. "So this is a human warship? It's very… dark."

Shepard swiftly scanned the lot of them, taking inventory. Everyone appeared shaken but unharmed. T'soni seemed half in a daze, whereas Alenko had already moved to a control panel to secure the rear hatch. As for Williams, there was something sullen in the way she stalked across the shuttle bay that bespoke trouble. Shepard shook her head. _What else is new._

The commander lurched to a standing position, clutching her shoulder, and answered the asari's unspoken question. "It's a hybrid design. Turian and human."

Alenko gave the injury a pointed glance. "You really should have that looked at, Commander."

"On my way, Lieutenant." She nodded at T'soni, who was swooning slightly, one hand spread against the wall for balance. "Someone should check her out, too. She was in that cell awhile, no food, water, or sleep."

Dr. T'soni was distracted, her mind still lingering on the loss of the ruins. Shepard repeated her concern. The asari bit her lip. "I feel fine, only a bit tired, but I suppose it couldn't hurt to subject myself to the attentions of a medical professional."

They rode the elevator up one deck to the medbay. Chakwas was unruffled, her dry humor well intact. "I'm happy to see you've at least avoided a head injury this time, Commander."

Williams, tagging along, tried to roll with the joke, but there was an edge to her words that caused the humor to fall flat. "Well, she'd already made us practice med-evac procedures once this month."

"Quite." Chakwas' gaze lingered on the younger woman a half-second, but she let the matter lie at that. "Let's have a look at that shoulder."

Shepard sat down on an exam table, unstrapping the damaged shoulder guard with Chakwas' help. "It's not serious, just a bit of shrapnel or something buried in the muscle. Honestly, I'm more annoyed at the time I'll have to spend fixing this armor webbing."

The exposed wound was an ugly red gash slick with medigel and surrounded by greenish-yellow bruising. Chakwas clucked her tongue as she felt around the injury, Shepard gritting her teeth to prevent herself from flinching. A quick scan of the site with an omni-tool revealed the location of the shard. "The first aid did its job and sealed it up. Unfortunately, your shrapnel's still inside. I'm going to have to reopen it."

"Great." Shepard lay back on the table and folded her hands over her stomach. She wasn't thrilled, exactly, but the procedure was scarcely unexpected. No choice but to let the doctor do her work.

T'soni crowded near, almost hovering. "I didn't realize you were hurt."

"This isn't hurt. This is inconvenienced."

Alenko leaned up against the next table over and folded his arms across his chest, half a smile on his face. "Could've been worse. Could've been another beacon down there, waiting to knock you out."

"I think you meant 'waiting to ensnare my L.T.'s overactive curiosity', thus requiring me to save his ass again." She grinned.

He waved a hand, dismissing the remark. "Details."

Chakwas passed between them, a prepared needle in hand, and injected her shoulder with a strong local anesthetic. Shepard couldn't withhold her faint sigh of relief as blissful numbness spread through the site and banished the stabbing ache. The doctor pulled away more of her armor and began swabbing the injury with antiseptic.

"Beacon?" The asari, an archaeologist to her core, was instantly focused. "What beacon?"

Alenko glanced at her. "We found a Prothean artifact on Eden Prime. It was carrying some kind of garbled message that imprinted directly on Commander Shepard's brain."

"Then it blew up." Williams snorted. "Pretty crappy comm system."

T'soni was astonished. "Yes, such things have been found before. It's extraordinarily rare to find one intact, much still operational. Sometimes it almost feels like they were systematically disabled. Small wonder the geth attacked your colony."

"It's not the geth." Shepard shifted slightly at the doctor's direction, to give better access to the site of her injury. "The machines are just worker bees for a turian spectre named Saren Arterius. We have a recorded conversation tying your mother to him. They're looking for something called the Conduit, and apparently that's linked somehow to Prothean tech."

Her expression clouded. "Hence their interest in me."

"Yes." Shepard watched her closely. T'soni's face was pensive, mixed with a little anger and a little sadness. "I got the impression things aren't great between you and your mom."

"That is an understatement." Her chuckle was dry and laced with self-deprecation. "I know it sounds very self-pitying, but it's never been easy, being the daughter of an influential matriarch. I had everything I ever needed, yet she was always distant, and there were so many expectations placed on my shoulders. I never truly felt like I knew what she was thinking, but this…"

"I can relate. My mom's not a galactic icon of progressive thought, but she's very…" Shepard searched for a word that was both diplomatic and true. "Driven."

Chakwas pulled another needle out of her flesh. Shepard hadn't even noticed it going in. There was no feeling at all left in her shoulder. Her attention returned to T'soni. "So you have no idea where this Conduit is?"

The asari shook her head. "Nor even _what _it is. But maybe if I had a look at the data… I don't know. I could try. I owe you that much."

"Lie still." Dr. Chakwas pulled the sterile cover off a scalpel and braced the commander with one hand, while the other expertly drew a three-centimeter incision with the blade. Shepard observed with morbid fascination.

T'soni blanched as blood welled from the cut and turned away. Shepard was suddenly chagrined. "You know, you don't have to stay. We can talk about this some other time."

"No." If anything, her tone was more determined. "You were hurt trying to rescue me. I'm not going to be scared off by a little surgery. It must have been… very bad on the surface."

"I guess." She tried to shrug, but the doctor was holding her tight. Chakwas' expression was pure exasperation. Shepard made more of an effort to keep still.

Williams exploded without warning, from smoldering to enraged in an eyeblink. "You _guess_? The facility was completely overrun. When we found those miners, you didn't even flinch. But you never do, do you? You just walked all over those bodies at the spaceport too, wrinkling your nose 'cause it smelled bad, never giving them a second glance-"

Alenko stiffened and snapped out a warning with a razor's edge to it, an unusual tone for him. "Drop it, Chief."

But Williams was relentless. "And now we're standing around an operating table like it's some kind of fucking tea party! What is wrong with you?"

Shepard's eyes blazed dangerously. "Eden Prime wasn't my fault Ash, nor was this. I suggest you pull yourself together."

Williams took no heed. "You're so damn cold! _Don't you even care what happened to those people?_"

"Gunnery Chief Williams!" Lt. Alenko's voice thundered through the medbay.

He was by nature a quiet man, not prone to rashness or overblown reactions. Hearing him adopt the cold fury of a superior officer who had more than enough of this particular marine sent a ripple of shock through the room. Even Chakwas paused to stare.

It hit Williams like ice water, quenching her anger with a sudden sense of reckoning as she comprehended just how far behind her lay the line. She drew herself to shaky attention in the ringing silence that followed, not meeting his eyes, and swallowed. "Sir."

"As of this moment, you are relieved of duty until further notice." His words were clipped, completely out of patience. "Dismissed."

The chief saluted and hightailed it out the medbay hatch, but not quite fast enough for Shepard to miss the flicker of relief on her face that it hadn't been worse. She wore a wry expression as she turned to Alenko and raised an eyebrow.

He was still leaning against the exam table, looking at the hatch with profound irritation. "She shouldn't talk to you like that. And you made it clear she's my problem."

Shepard suppressed a chuckle, surprised by the tiredness in her own voice, and lay back. "Carry on, Lieutenant."

Chakwas reached for a set of medical tweezers. "If you are quite finished squirming about…"

"Sorry, doc."

The remainder of the procedure went smoothly. Chakwas found the shard of ceramic plating without difficulty, and pulled out needle and thread, explaining that the mobility of the site made it a poor candidate for surgical glue. Shepard nodded absently- it didn't make much difference to her.

As Chakwas was tying off the last of the stitches and finishing her lecture on antibiotics, Shepard took the opportunity to draw her attention to their asari guest. "We found Dr. T'soni trapped in less than ideal conditions. She's probably dehydrated if nothing else."

"Please." The asari was embarrassed. "My name is Liara, and I'm certain your doctor has more important matters to attend."

"Nonsense." Chakwas was firm, but smiling. "I don't often get to use my skills in treating aliens. It would be my pleasure."

The comm crackled into life, drawing all their attention to the ceiling. Joker said, "Commander, I transmitted mission status back to Captain Anderson. He wants to talk to you ASAP. He doesn't sound happy."

"Tell the comm officer I'll be there in ten minutes." She turned her attention to Chakwas. "I'm free to go?"

At her nod, Shepard hopped off the table and made haste to her cabin, to strip off the damaged armor and climb into a clean uniform before taking the call, made slightly awkward by the numbness in her shoulder. From there it was a quick walk to the communications terminal. It was hard to believe it was only recently that she argued with Nihlus in this very room before watching Eden Prime go up in flames- it felt like half a lifetime.

She hit the button, and a thin-lipped young woman in dress uniform materialized. "Please hold for the ambassador's office."

It wasn't more than a few minutes before Anderson joined her. "Commander, I've just heard Joker's status update. Please tell me this is hyperbole."

"Depends on what he told you, I guess." Shepard gestured towards the gauze strapped to her shoulder. "I was getting patched up in medbay."

She was, in truth, a bit annoyed that Joker did not seek permission before making the transmission. It was protocol, sure, but the situation was delicate.

Anderson, however, was blunt. "A commercial mine and all its equipment ruined by your clumsiness- it was worth over ten million credits a year, did you know that? Eldfall-Ashland will be filing a hell of a civil suit against the Alliance."

Shepard was outraged. "They were hiding a _geth incursion_. We took care of it for them, though not before they lost a number of people thanks to their silence. And they want to _sue us for property damage?_"

The captain ignored her. "And worse- you destroyed a significant Prothean ruin, one with functional technology. Money is one thing, but this could have us facing sanctions from the Council should they deem your actions avoidable."

She rubbed her face, suddenly exhausted by more than just the mission. There was no escaping the damned politics, it seemed, even way out here in the ass end of nowhere. Shepard met his eyes sullenly. "What do you suggest, sir?"

"The Council is going to want a word with you, eventually. I _suggest _you keep your temper. Give them the facts, and don't argue. That's an order." Captain Anderson sighed, and massaged his temple. "Did you manage to secure Dr. T'soni, at least?"

She nodded, affirmative. "Yes, sir. She used the Prothean ruins to protect herself from the geth, but the same mechanism trapped her as well. She's thirsty and tired, but nothing too serious. Dr. Chakwas is seeing to her."

"So she wasn't leading them." Anderson's expression was pensive. "You trust her? You think she was a victim in all this?"

"I don't know what I think," Shepard answered honestly. "My gut says yes, but my head says keep an eye on her. She claims not to know anything about the Conduit or her mother's extracurricular activities. Even so, her understanding of the Protheans could prove invaluable, and she's very grateful for our rescue."

"Hmm." He rested his chin in his hand, contemplating for a long moment. "Keep her close, then. Don't allow her to make unmonitored transmissions or wander off ship until you're certain."

She saluted. "Yes, sir."

He reached for the disconnect. "And Shepard? If you're right and the asari isn't involved, you're going to need a new lead fast. The media is still eating us for breakfast over Eden Prime. It's starting to have real consequences- colonization industries are taking a significant hit, and the fleets are stretched thin trying to safeguard too much territory. We need to show we're doing something."

"We are, sir." Her mouth turned up at one side, aware of the hubris, but unable to stop the smart-alec reply. "We sent me."

He shook his head and resisted the bait. "Anderson out."


	18. Chapter 18

Shepard was getting awfully tired of flying awake in the dead of night. Wakefulness chased the final figments of nightmare back into hiding, but the fitful rest was beginning to take a toll on her acuity. Wistfully, she wished she could blame the beacon for this one, but she had plenty of her own ghosts long before she set foot on Eden Prime.

Some water on her face and a trip to the microwave later, and she curled up on her cabin's couch with a mug of hot chocolate and a collection of reports on her datapad, only too aware that the key to banishing this particular bad dream lay with the solution to this puzzle.

The hiss and pop of static from a recorded comm feed filled the small cabin. There was no excuse for listening; if the _Normandy _VI couldn't find a pattern in the silence, it was damn unlikely Shepard would. And it wasn't as if the noise was pleasant- on the contrary, it was harsh and sullen. Maybe it gave her the illusion of productivity as she once again rifled through the scant information. It was a side task since they arrived in Artemis Tau, easy enough to complete while they searched for T'soni, but now they had the doctor in hand and it was harder for Shepard to justify resource expenditure continuing to look for Kahoku's missing soldiers.

The details were sketchy at best. Seven marines from the Fourth Frontier Division, whose patrol territory included Artemis Tau, plus a pilot and a communications specialist, took a corvette to scout the region for clues regarding Armistan Banes' death. Corvette class wasn't much of a ship- barely enough room for ten people and some survey equipment- and it wasn't intended for long voyages. It needed to return to its flagship every few weeks at the outside. The similarities between their mission and her own deeper into batarian space a year past weren't lost on the commander. It was what was keeping her up like this.

A corvette was a very small ship to live on for even a single month. These scouts had been missing for more than two. Shepard believed what she told the admiral, that his men were likely lost, and that the ship would be the next best thing to impossible to locate. But here she was, trying. If she left the cluster without making something like a serious attempt on the problem, it would cost her. That was why she didn't want to get involved in the first place.

_This won't bring Chahine back_, the voice of her subconscious whispered, mistrusting this exercise. _It won't undo the things that happened on that ship._

She pushed the dark observations away, aware this activity wasn't entirely rational, and not much caring. What was the point of being a spectre if she couldn't exercise her own judgment, after all? Prudence and pragmatism she could get from the same Alliance who deemed this a fool's errand.

Banes' ship was found drifting on the very edge of the Sparta system. They'd surveyed that region only cursorily while searching for Liara. Of the four charted systems in Artemis Tau, Sparta was the least beloved by the Protheans, and thus least likely to attract an archaeologist. But they'd found nothing of the marines anywhere else. Maybe it deserved a closer look. Or maybe she should conserve the considerable fuel traveling back to the system would cost the ship, and keep focused on Saren.

Not that she had any better idea where to go next on _that _mission, either.

Shepard threw down the datapad, frustrated. It bounced off her coffee table with an unsettling crack. The commander let it lie, wrapping her arms around her knees and trying not to dwell on how exhausted she was, or how hopeless their task seemed in the harsh light of very early morning. Things would look better tomorrow, when she could gather her crew and make a real start on this data, get a few more bodies working on the task. She'd do it now, but it was late in the third shift, and nobody would be at their best.

She realized her mind was decided. All that was left was to give the order. Shepard glanced at the ceiling. "Get me the bridge."

There was a pause, before a voice laden with the dregs of sleep slurred a response. "Commander. Ma'am. What?"

"Joker, don't you ever leave that chair?"

"Only when I gotta shower or use the head. Takes too long to get back when she needs me." There was real affection in his voice. She pictured him fussily brushing dust from the _Normandy's _flight console, and shook her head. Some waters were too deep to wade.

Still, he was awake now, and Shepard took full advantage. "I want to take us back to Sparta."

Joker didn't disguise his surprise. "What, right now?"

"Pressly's flight plan from last week should still be valid," she answered steadily. "We can do a mid-course correction in the morning if necessary."

Joker grumbled. "I deserve a damn medal after pulling you out of a _freaking volcano_, and instead you're waking me up at ass o'clock in the morning-"

"Joker," she sighed, tiredly. "Do I sound like I'm in the mood for this?"

He coughed. "Aye, ma'am, cuing up the flight plan now." Another pause. "Correcting for drift, it should take us about three days to get there."

"Do it. Shepard out." The VI cut off the intercom, leaving Shepard to her own thoughts.

The Asimov novel she borrowed from Alenko was laying open on the arm of the couch. After a moment, she stretched across to retrieve it, flipping back a page. She'd been called away in the middle of a paragraph to look at some infrared images one of the specialists up in the CIC thought might be geth, despite the geth running colder than satan's own air conditioner. And then it was a small coolant leak in the drive core chamber. And then a mix-up concerning the duty roster. And then, and then, and then.

Well, she had time to read now. Across the pages of the book, Siferra 89 stalked the sands of Beklimot, barking orders at her survey team, refusing to bow in defeat to the sandstorm that was coming to ravage their camp. Shepard wondered if Liara was like that at her own digs. It was difficult to picture the bookish archaeologist taking charge. Then again, battling unfavorable odds was more Shepard's arena- perhaps, in her own sphere, the doctor was more self-assured.

Certainly Liara was no soldier. Siferra would have made a model Alliance officer, collected and defiant to the last, even while privately half-convinced that her own arrogance led her colleagues and students to their deaths. There was no room for doubt in dire situations. Shepard wished more people in the real world could understand that point. And they'd shared the misfortune of a terrible discovery that could threaten their respective civilizations, greeted only with contempt by their superiors. On that point, Shepard was free of all reservation- the Reapers destroyed the Prothean Empire.

_Maybe they had no warning._ The logic was placating, but failed to banish her misgivings. The Protheans built the Citadel, the relays, left their fingerprints on who knew how many worlds. The Council's policy of fully exploring relays before pressing them into service slowed expansion considerably. Maybe less territory to defend, but maybe fewer resources to exploit, too, in all-out war. If their august predecessors lacked the might to stand unbroken before the synthetics' so-called gods, who was she kidding?

_It won't come to that_, she told herself, firmly, lifting the book once more. They were going to beat Saren to whatever this "Conduit" might be, and circumvent the Reapers' plan. There were no other options Shepard was willing to entertain. Firmly, she focused on the story, allowing its pages to carry her thoughts away from pointless fretting.

The commander read deep into the night before sleep at last found her again.

/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\

Her feet pounded against the metal deck in a way that seemed overly loud in the confines of the _Normandy_. It took three decks to get a good circuit- a big loop around the shuttle bay, avoiding the bulk of the Mako, run in place on the elevator up to the mess, circle around the tables and down through the battery, then up the stairs to the CIC and follow the curve of the banister until it reached the other flight of stairs that took her back to the elevator for the next circuit. Some days, she thought if mag boots were more efficient, and the plasma wash less hazardous, it would be far simpler to make use of the airlock and run along the underside of the ship.

Or maybe in concertina spirals around the fuselage, she mused, darting to the side to avoid an early riser retrieving his morning cup of coffee.

Shepard was running this morning as much to wake herself as for the exercise. Maybe it was time to take Chakwas' offer of a sedative seriously, but she still worried that if there was an emergency in the night, the medication's grip would be too tight to meet it. At the same time nobody could live on a few hours' sleep a day indefinitely, not even her. _You'd think all the illicit genemod scientists who fled to the Terminus would've produced a way to eliminate the need to rest by now._

The lukewarm shower that followed was effective in its own right at dragging her out of her exhaustion. There was something very satisfying in washing away the sweat and grime with good clean soap, watching it drift down the drain into the _Normandy's _reclamation tanks. By the time she was dressed and her hair dry, she felt ready to face the day.

She called together the senior officers as well as their communications personnel for an early meeting in the comm room. Technically, it was breakfast. There were more than a few sleepy stares and hastily snagged pieces of toast floating around the room. On the screen, Shepard primed a simulation of the Sparta system with all the known information about Kahoku's team.

She folded her hands behind her and said, briskly, "This morning I ordered our helmsman to return to Sparta. After the events of Therum, any Alliance presence in this sector will be focused on defensive measures for our outposts. This may be the last opportunity for quite some time that anybody is in a position to locate the missing scouting sortie sent by the rear admiral."

Pressly's objection was immediate. "Commander, Sparta is something like four days out of our way."

"More like three," she replied, keeping it pleasant. "You have concerns?"

"Now you're a navigator, ma'am?" He pursed his lips. "Regardless, this is… Wouldn't our time be better spent looking for Saren?"

"I'd love to. Where do you think we should try next?"

Pressly looked away. Shepard let her silence comment on that for a moment, before returning to the map, ignoring the glances of consensus exchanged between her crew.

"Adm. Kahoku found Banes' ship here." She pointed. "Well outside the orbit of the outermost planet and on an escape trajectory. Someone caught him while he was making for the mass relay. Why this system? No habitable planets, no place to hunker down and hide, from the Alliance or anyone else. So we have to conclude he died for something he found here."

Alenko was clutching a mug of tea like his life depended on it, obviously not a morning person. He cleared his throat. "Ma'am, the odds that any of those men are still alive are minimal."

"I'm aware of the facts." Shepard looked around the room, seeing the doubt on their faces. Alenko was more diplomatic than Pressly, but neither officer was saying anything the rest weren't thinking. "I'm not anticipating this will be a rescue operation. I'd like to know what happened to them- not only to bring their families peace of mind, but because if two scouting parties, Banes and Kahoku's men, can go missing in the same sector, it might be worth knowing why."

She leaned against the thin rail that held the interface for their transponders, tapping her fingers against the metal a few times. "Finding Saren isn't likely to be a quick or a simple endeavor. We're still pressing the leads we have. In the meantime, we're the most advanced surveillance ship in the Alliance fleet. We have an obligation to assist other operations where it doesn't interfere with our primary mission. Understood?"

There were a few troubled faces, but affirmation came readily enough. Shepard could live with that. Alenko, however, was watching her closely, like he didn't quite buy her rationale- sensibly so, seeing as she didn't believe it either. She ignored his scrutiny. "I want to spend our travel time reviewing our previous scans. The first pass we were only looking for maydays on Alliance frequencies. We should parse it again looking for anything out of the ordinary that might hint at where these men went or what they found."

"There are some colonial frequencies we haven't tried yet," one of the communications staff, Specialist Lowe, answered reluctantly.

Her colleague, Serviceman Bakari, chimed in with relatively greater enthusiasm. "We could also check the sub-relays. Maybe their transponder failed. The system's not more than twenty light-hours across, so any emergency signal like that would be everywhere by now."

That perked Shepard's interest. "Can we check sub-relay frequencies while the FTL drive is engaged?"

They exchanged a glance. "We'll have to jury-rig it…"

"The _Normandy's _plasma sheath's gonna play merry hell with the signal…" She chewed her lip. "Maybe."

"Try it." She shifted her attention to Pressly. "Sound an alert when we're two light months from Sparta, so we can start examining those signals."

He nodded. "Aye, Commander."

"Alenko." She turned to the staff lieutenant. "If we find them, we don't know what kind of situation we're going to be dealing with. Could be a boarding, could be a landing, could be something else altogether. I need our marines ready to go as soon as we get a signal."

He thought about it for a few beats, running strategies in his head. "We've trained for just about anything, but you're talking about several scenarios requiring very different tactics, with little notice before we go."

"Welcome to spec ops, lieutenant. Can they be ready?"

Alenko's expression turned inward as he considered, before he nodded, firmly. "Yes, ma'am."

Shepard smiled. "Alright. We've got a plan, people. You know what to do. Dismissed."

As the room dispersed, Alenko wandered over. He waited a moment for the last of the stragglers to leave. "So, you want to tell me what's up?"

"'What's up'?" Shepard continued unloading the display, unconcerned.

He snorted. "Look, Commander, I've been a marine for ten years. You spin some pretty fine bullshit, but I know it when I see it. What's the real story here? Why are we doing this?"

She hesitated a moment before deciding to simply use the truth. "I can't tell you."

"I get that you don't want to talk about it for whatever reason, but if it's endangering the crew-"

"No, I mean, I really can't tell you." Shepard snagged the data disk and shut the terminal down. "It's classified above your level. I'd go to prison."

His eyebrows knitted in confusion. "I've got clearance for everything that's not coded."

"No, you don't," she said, with more patience than she felt. It shouldn't be any stretch to realize there were access levels that weren't widely advertised. "I checked everyone's dossier when Anderson made me X.O. And even if you did there's no need-to-know."

That last slipped out without thinking, and she cursed herself as he pounced on it. "So this doesn't have anything to do with the mission. It's personal."

Shepard threw up her hands. "Is it really so terrible that someone go looking for these people?"

He studied her, crossing his arms over his chest, before shaking his head. "No. I'm not going to deny there's something noble about trying after everyone else gave up. But we don't know what happened to them, and we don't know what's waiting for us if and when we find them, except it's likely to be bad. Nobody wants to die for a corpse."

"How many of them would die for the corpses on Eden Prime?" Shepard shot back, pointing towards the hatch that led into the CIC. "What makes these corpses any different?"

To her surprise, he frowned, but didn't argue. "That's a fair point, ma'am. I don't know. We didn't fail to stop this happening, I guess."

Her face softened. She rubbed her eyes, tiredly. "The invasion was already half over by the time we picked up Williams' transmission. There was nothing we could have done to stop Saren on Eden Prime short of bombing the whole place from orbit."

"Yeah, I know." Alenko shifted his weight, glanced away for a second, before looking back at her. "Doesn't make it any easier."

His expression was conflicted, acknowledging the truth but unable to shake the regret. Shepard recalled his flippant comment about the "great wandering hero saving the universe", and was struck by a sudden rush of affection for him as the realization hit her. "You really did want to help people. That's why you signed up."

"I do help people," he shot back, more defensive than expected.

She held up her hands. "No argument here."

He shrugged, almost self-consciously, and started heading for the door. Almost despite herself, she called after him. "Alenko."

Momentary confusion was replaced by chagrin. "I'm sorry, ma'am, I guess you didn't dismiss me."

"What?" For a second, Shepard herself was confused. She shook her head. "No, that wasn't- nevermind. I wanted to say I wish I could explain. Truly."

Alenko processed that. "Why?"

"Because I think you'd be nice about it," she said honestly. "Most people wouldn't."

He nearly smiled at that, and stuck his hands in his pockets. "Well, ma'am, if you have anything that's not legally proscribed, I'm a decent listener."

"Too good, maybe. You have a knack for dragging stories out of me without even trying." Shepard crossed her arms and leaned against the guard rail, exasperated but not really minding.

He laughed. "Not a complaint I've heard before."

She grinned back, and started to make a coy reply, before her brain gave her a metaphorical kick in the shins. _Nathaly, what the hell are you doing?_

Suddenly self-conscious, she looked down, fiddling with the data disk, and switched tactics. "I think that's everything. Thanks, lieutenant."

"Ma'am." Alenko headed back into the CIC to start making plans.

Shepard rubbed her face, thinking back over the conversation, and decided she was blowing things out of proportion. She reset the terminal and took the elevator back to her cabin to sort through the latest round of reports.

/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\

It was after lunch when Shepard made her way down to the shuttle bay to check in with logistics. Therum was just this side of habitable, but it got her worried about extreme environments, and if they had the gear to handle such a landing.

Williams had taken over a large table near the back, with what looked like half the arms on the ship strewn over the surface, and a dirty rag in hand. Shepard pursed her lips and decided to get it over with.

The chief dropped what she was doing and saluted as Shepard approached. "Ma'am."

"At ease, Chief." Shepard surveyed the work. "Cleaning out our guns?"

"The L.T. said to keep going until every firearm on the _Normandy _is shiny like new, or he tells me to stop." Williams grimaced. "Don't suppose you'd care to countermand that, ma'am?"

"Don't suppose I would." She picked up one of the finished rifles and slid it into combat configuration. The parts moved silently and seamlessly past each other, not too slippery, not too stiff. The work was solid and complete, despite being nearly unsupervised and with an axe to grind. Shepard told her so.

Williams shrugged. "I don't forget what they taught us in basic, ma'am, even if from the state of things half these grunts do."

The chief eyed the assorted weaponry with something between disbelief and disgust, and Shepard had to struggle to swallow a laugh. It was true that most marines didn't gunk out the works as often as they should. It was a tedious and time-consuming task, making it just about perfect as punishment details went.

Shepard sat on the edge of the table. "Your memory seems awful spotty when it comes to the part about respecting chain of command."

There was no malice in her tone, no attempt to rub it in. The statement was more an invitation.

Williams swallowed. "I'm sorry about that, ma'am. The _Normandy _did her best. I just wish…"

"…we'd gotten there a little sooner," Shepard finished, quietly. "So do I."

"Thank you, ma'am."

Shepard reset the gun to its holstered configuration, buying a little time while she tried to figure out what to say. "You know, I was invited to Rio for ICT training when I was nineteen. I've been doing this about ten years, give or take."

"Do you get a commemorative watch for that?" Williams spat out before she could stop herself. She colored. "Sorry, ma'am."

"Careful, Chief, you'll wear out the word." Shepard rubbed the side of her nose and sat down on the edge of the table, her feet hanging over the floor. "Look, you're technically still relieved so I'm going to take off my officer hat for a minute and speak candidly. You think I'm not being properly sympathetic to you."

"I didn't-"

She overrode her protests. "My point in mentioning my history with spec ops is that by the time they send me into a situation, it's a safe bet that things are fairly fucked already. Eden Prime, Akuze, down there in that mine… I've seen a lot of that. I've had some time to think about it."

Shepard was half-expecting another bout of sarcasm, but Williams seemed to be listening now. The chief fidgeted with the rag a few seconds. "And what did you find out?"

"That we're not meant for this. Humans. We're not built to deal with it." She shrugged. "Those kinds of experiences tear you into tiny pieces, and what gets put back together isn't always particularly charming."

A little flippancy oozed back in. Alenko was right about one thing- it was clearly self-defensive. Williams wasn't processing events of the last few weeks well. "This is the part where you tell me they make you stronger?"

"They do make you tough," Shepard acknowledged. "Is it worth it? Hell if I know. Someone's got to do it. Might as well be someone who's already got the scars. It's piss poor logistics otherwise."

"And which scars are those?" There was more than a little curiosity in the question.

Williams needed to know how someone could live with that kind of burden, in the long run. She needed to understand how to survive it. Knowing that made Shepard more honest than she liked regarding things this personal. "I don't sleep well. Haven't for years. I understand people easily but relating is difficult. There are drawers in my head I don't open."

The chief's open expression soured. She looked away and took up the rag again. "Compartmentalization."

"You do remember your training after all." Shepard folded her arms, bemused.

"I don't want to…" Williams picked up a gun, put it back down. "I hate that I can't get it out of my head. But I don't want to forget either. I don't want it to mean nothing. If I let go…"

"Don't mistake doing what is required to protect yourself for forgetting. You have a right to survive. If it gets into the core of you, it'll eat you alive. That's what it wants." Shepard shook her head and stared at the ceiling. "Maybe you'll find a better way. I never did."

She turned it over for a few long moments. "I think I understand what you're saying. It's not easy."

"Never said it would be. But you took the oath like everyone else." Shepard hopped off the table. "And for the record, Ash, I care. I care a lot. If I didn't, I'd be out in the Terminus making absolutely stupid amounts of money."

Williams caught the lighthearted change of tone, and snorted disbelief. "How's that, ma'am?"

"I worked with this merc out there once. Long story. At the end of the mission, he said he could get me a contract if I was interested." Shepard sighed. "I'm not even going to tell you what he quoted me, it'd make you cry every time you got your pay for months."

The intercom interrupted their conversation. Pressly still sounded thoroughly annoyed by his assignment. "Commander, we have some data for you in the CIC."

"Be right up." She clapped Williams on the back. "Keep at it. I'm sure those weapons will be clean in no time."

Williams made a face. "Aye, ma'am."

Two decks up, the communications team had pulled together a report on the Sparta system. It was a miserable place even by Traverse standards. Not one habitable planet, though its two asteroid belts had attracted a fair amount of mining interest from humans and batarians alike. Low-gravity, high-yield worldlets were appealing from a logistics standpoint, though more initial investment in equipment was required. Some of the better companies had spin smelters that could engulf entire asteroids in their bays.

The plentiful planetoids also made it quite difficult to parse small objects, like ships, from their earlier ladar scans. The first pass nobody gave it much effort. They expected to find T'soni on the ground. Now they'd gone back through, eliminating targets from cartographic databases, and projecting orbits and assigning mass estimates to each remaining unknown object. Modern VI processing was astounding; with a scant twenty-four hours of coverage, the ship's computer was able to eliminate all but about a hundred targets as possibilities. Most of those were muddied in the asteroid belts. Shepard much doubted the corvette would be there. Dismissing those left twenty candidates.

Explaining their methods and results took a solid hour, in the half-dark of the CIC. The information was pertinent and fascinating, but Shepard had to fight to suppress her yawns. There was a reason she went to school on the extranet- lectures put her to sleep even when her energy tanks were topped off. Well, that and she hadn't wanted to go in the first place. Her the-C.O. talked her into it- thought she'd make a brilliant officer, and it was a requirement to enter Officer Candidate School.

_And isn't that paying out. _Back then it seemed like officers had it made, with better pay, better jobs, and all the glory when things went right. Even growing up as her mother's daughter, Shepard was able to ignore the reality of responsibility right up until the moment it smacked into her. And even Hannah never mentioned the sleepless nights. God, but she would kill for a nap, just shut her eyes for ten minutes. Maybe thirty.

_I should've been a race car driver. I'd've been great at it._

"Ma'am?" Specialist Lowe had paused, laser in hand, evidently awaiting her attention.

Shepard cleared her throat, brushing aside the childish daydream, and rapidly skimmed the screen. "Do we know where to find these twenty targets when we arrive in the Sparta system?"

"We have only crude orbital data. The projections aren't very good, with such a small time sample, and factoring in gravitational influence from the non-solar objects, the geometric calculations are-"

"-complicated. Right." Shepard folded her hands on her knee. "Let me put it another way. How likely are we to find any of them?"

Lowe opened her mouth, doubtless to spew more prevarications couched in jargon, but Bakari beat her to it. "Commander, ma'am, what Specialist Lowe is trying to say is the margin of error is large. It'll take some time to reacquire the targets when we drop out of FTL."

"Damn it." Shepard sat back. "This is our best shot. A corvette's tiny. Air and water are no problem, but if there's any chance they're still alive, it's going to be a question of other resources."

Bakari tried for conciliatory. "Ma'am, they've been out here for months. Another few days while we finish our scans and work the calculations can't hurt."

"You have no idea how long even a minute lasts in circumstances like these." Each syllable was clipped and frosty.

"And what circumstances are those, ma'am? We have no idea what happened here."

"Which is exactly why we're going to find out."

The pair of comm techs exchanged a glance. Lowe was bravest. "Commander Shepard, we're doing all we can."

They were both watching her with a mixture of frustration, confusion, and apprehension. She put her hand to her forehead. The last few nights were clearly getting the better of her. "All I'm saying is let's do our best here, alright? If it takes a few days that's how long it takes."

"Aye, ma'am." They both saluted as she rose to go.

Shepard paused, glancing over her shoulder. "Good work. I know orbital mechanics aren't your specialties, but I appreciate it."

They stood a little straighter. Bakari might have even smiled a bit. She left them to head down to engineering.

By the time dinner rolled around, she felt like she was walking through mud, every step dragging. A small frigate like the _Normandy _didn't rate a full kitchen or staff to fix the meals, so they had nonperishable snack food and pre-prepared meal packages that got finished off in a machine specifically engineered for that purpose. They weren't MREs- you couldn't eat them straight out of storage- but they weren't beloved by the crew, either. Food remained the most requested item from home.

Generally at meal times it was someone's duty to start running the packages through so the incoming crew could snag their ration without generating huge lines and the resultant schedule delays. Shepard grabbed her vegetarian option from its smaller, separate freezer, slipped it into the queue, and waited for the machine to do its work before retreating to the lounge area to eat.

The area wasn't much to look at, just a collection of somewhat more comfortable couches, a few vid terminals, and a couple shelves of books, but on a ship where most people hot bunked in sleeper pods it provided some much-needed relaxation space. Technically, food was supposed to remain confined to the mess, but as long as nobody trashed the place, Shepard was inclined to leniency on that particular reg. What the hell good was a movie without any popcorn, anyway?

She settled down and clicked on the news, picking up her fork.

"Commander?"

Shepard's head jerked up. A different newscaster was nattering away on the vid terminal, and her food was cold in her lap. Alenko and T'soni were staring down at her with concern. Shepard blinked away the fog and cleared her throat. "Hi. What?"

"You kind of fell asleep there." Alenko was at once amused and faintly worried.

She looked around. The mess was quiet now, so her unplanned nap lasted at least thirty minutes. "I guess I did."

He folded his arms on top of the opposite couch, not unsympathetically. "The beacon still giving you nightmares?"

"Sort of," she answered vaguely. She stabbed a piece of cauliflower and popped it in her mouth. The sauce wasn't half-bad cold, though thicker than was her taste.

T'soni's not-eyebrows knit together in confusion. "The message from the beacon is troubling your sleep? I know the interface was scarcely designed for a human mind, but that reaction still strikes me as extreme."

"It wasn't exactly a grocery list, Liara." She sighed and scooped some of the rice into the sauce.

The doctor tentatively perched on a couch, her palms flat against her knees. "I don't want to intrude, but you must understand, an operational beacon is a once-in-a-lifetime find. I'm intensely curious. The Protheans have been my specialty since graduate school."

Shepard was interested despite herself. "What exactly caught your attention about them?"

"A race with the scientific understanding and vision necessary to build something like the mass relay network vanishes practically overnight, no survivors, no real records other than their ruins?" Her face was alight. "The record is so clean that it's almost as if something came after they were gone and tidied up. How is that not fascinating?"

The words made Shepard's blood run cold. She exchanged a glance with the lieutenant, seeing the same thought written on his face, and he asked, carefully, "Is this is a real theory, doctor, or just speculation?"

She appeared almost sad for a moment, though no less earnest. "That depends who you ask. I'm afraid I am very young for an asari, and my research does not always receive the attention it deserves. But the demise of the Prothean Empire is at the heart of my work. After fifty years of study that is my conclusion, but I lack a… well, an agent, something to explain my findings."

Shepard ate a few more bites, chewing slowly. "I have a theory of my own about that."

"Really? I had no idea you were an enthusiast."

"I'm not." She set down her fork. "The information stored in the beacon on Eden Prime concerned the fall of the Protheans. It wasn't a natural end. They were destroyed by something vastly more powerful."

Liara was by now leaning so far forward she was in danger of falling off the seat. "And what was that?"

Carnage from the last Prothean battlegrounds flashed through the background of Shepard's mind. In light of the archaeologist's breathless enthusiasm, she felt faintly ill.

Alenko's attention was still on the scientist. "You didn't ask us why Saren and your mother are searching for old Prothean tech. They believe the Conduit is the key to realizing the return of something they called 'Reapers'."

"This is the first time I've heard that term. What does it mean?"

"We're not sure." Alenko shrugged. "If you ask Tali- the quarian down in engineering- they're a mythical race of sentient machines deified in some form of geth religion."

Liara was nonplussed. "Synthetics don't have religion."

Shepard shook her head. "I'm not sure religion is the right word. But Saren, and your mother, believe the Reapers are real. It squares with the images I got from the beacon."

The doctor looked from one of them to other, as if waiting for the joke, but found both their faces entirely sober. "And you believe this?"

"Yes," Shepard said, simply. "I know how it sounds, but I've never been more certain of anything in my life."

"If she believes it, that's good enough for me," Alenko chimed in.

Liara digested that. "And my mother wants to _bring them back_?"

Alenko attempted to moderate the statement, a kind of cold comfort. "We're not sure of anything right now. All we know is Benezia is working with Saren, and they're scouring the Traverse for the Conduit."

Shepard sat back and crossed her arms. "It sure looks like it though."

Liara got to her feet and paced a few steps in the tight confines of the lounge. "My mother would never do anything to harm the asari. To think it is like watching the sky fall in. There's got to be more to this."

Shepard hoped so, for her sake, but privately doubted it. "We won't know until we find her, and right now, we have no idea where to look."

The doctor turned away for a long moment, her shoulders moving up and down with a deep intake of breath. "Yes. I will see what I can do."

Shepard reached over and touched her hand. "Thank you. I know this can't be easy."

"No." The asari gave herself a small shake. "I think I will return to my work. Dr. Chakwas has kindly allowed me to take over a portion of the medbay's laboratory."

She started to walk away, then paused and turned back. "Shepard, if the beacon's visions are troubling you, I may be able to offer some assistance. My people's biotic gifts make us very adept at navigating the difficult terrain of the mind."

"What?"

"I could meld my mind with yours," Liara clarified. "It would not be unpleasant, I assure you."

Shepard was taken aback, and tried not to look as repulsed as she felt at the idea of letting anyone else inside her skull. It was an obvious cultural misalignment; Liara clearly believed she was offering a gift. "No thanks. If I can't sort it out myself I doubt any asari magic would help."

"It's not magic. I could help you examine those memories, perhaps make greater sense of them, given my own background. It might bring you peace."

"No, thank you," Shepard repeated, firmly.

If Liara was hurt by the rejection she hid it well. "As you prefer. I will return to the medbay now."

They watched her go. After a long moment, Alenko voiced the question they were both thinking. "Did she just…"

"I don't know." If there was one thing everyone knew about asari, it was their reputation for cross-species promiscuity, including what humans referred to colloquially as mind sex. It was the only kind of mental melding Shepard had heard of. "I have to assume there's more to it in asari culture. I mean, it didn't sound like…"

She trailed off, the conversation growing awkward. That was a complication she really didn't need.

Alenko turned towards the vid terminal and cleared his throat, grasping at a change of subject. "Hey, look. They're still running stories about you."

An ANN reporter with a penetrating stare and an aura of offense was speaking into the camera. His exaggerated tone of suspicion rubbed her wrong long before she understood what he was driving at. "We've all heard the official story from the Alliance. But what lies behind the PR? Tonight, new revelations from some of Commander Shepard's own family and friends."

The camera cut to a dark-haired young woman in Alliance utilities. Shepard's expression soured.

To the camera, the interviewee tossed her head, sending her pony tail bouncing. "Even growing up, there was always something different about her, you know? When her dad almost died, she didn't even cry. It's like she's a robot. Just point her in the right direction and stay out of her way."

Alenko reached over and flicked the terminal off.

"My cousin, Mariana," Shepard said into the silence that followed. "Lovely woman. Always looking for her fifteen minutes."

He didn't seem to know what to say. "She's your cousin?"

"On my dad's side, yeah." She speared another piece of ice-cold cauliflower. "It's complicated. Almost all his family's Alliance, but they're mainly enlisted, and my dad married an officer." She coughed. "His duty officer, to be precise. And ever since they've had this idea in their heads that we think we're better than them."

The words beneath her uncaring tone were brittle. He bit his lip. "Still, that's a nasty thing to say in public like that."

"I'm not saying I'm not retroactively glad I spat in her Cheerios when we were nine." She gave him a half-smile that was neither happy nor particularly upset, just resigned, and shrugged. "C'mon, did you really think Ash's outburst was the first time I've heard that? I know what I am. It just means now I have to give that interview when we get back to the Citadel, to give them something else to chew over."

At first it seemed as though he would push the subject, but instead he chose to take the hint, relaxing a fraction. "You spat in her cereal?"

"She deserved it." Shepard sat back, utterly smug. "Trust me."


	19. Chapter 19

Commander Nathaly Shepard stood in the CIC with her arms folded across her chest, taking in the latest, and likely final, round of ladar scans. "So you're telling me we've found nothing."

Specialist Lowe drew her hands behind her back. "In short, yes. Sorry, ma'am, I know this isn't the answer you hoped for."

Shepard picked up the datapads and sorted through them restlessly. "We had twenty targets."

"All of which turned out to be minor asteroids or phantom detections, ma'am." Lowe watched her anxiously, with the air of someone diffusing a bomb.

Serviceman Bakari prodded her arm and whispered, "Ma'am, don't you think we should tell her about-"

Lowe put a discreet elbow into his stomach.

The commander's hearing, however, was quite keen. "Tell me about what?"

"It's nothing." Lowe glared at Bakari. "This is a wild goose chase."

They arrived in Sparta four days ago. Everyone was tired of being there. Shepard was more than aware that she was running short of justifications to dawdle in the system. Liara hadn't yet come up with any strong ideas where Benezia might lurk, but the Council was breathing down her neck about the asari anyway. They had "offered" to personally debrief the archaeologist, which Shepard read correctly as "interrogate", and she had no plans to permit it. Anderson was trying to spin the mother of all PR disasters back on the Citadel, as a scarred humanity demanded justice for Eden Prime. Saren had yet to show himself.

And the _Normandy _was out here looking for a needle in a haystack. They should have left yesterday, but Shepard insisted they re-run the calculations. She couldn't shake the feeling that they were missing something. Call it gut instinct, or just that ships didn't vanish into nowhere.

Aloud, she said, "I like geese. What did you find?"

Reluctantly, and with a glare at her assistant, Lowe replied, "It's the second planet, ma'am. Edolus. We had to sharpen our resolution in its vicinity- there's a strange gravitational feedback loop between it and the gas giant, resulting in a lot of dust and debris."

Bakari's excitement made him impatient. "So we were able to pick up a signal normally below our thresholds. It's a faint trace of eezo, just north of the equator, like from a drive core."

Her brow knotted as she sifted through the datapads until she found Edolus. "But there's no ship there."

"No, but it's like a ship _was _there, ma'am. Maybe a disabled ship if there's enough eezo leakage for us to detect, or one that discharged right before landing."

She glanced between the datapad and the serviceman, growing only more confuse. "What the hell happened to it?"

He shrugged. Lowe copied the gesture. "Your guess is as good as ours."

Shepard looked across the CIC central island to Pressly's station, the navigator himself partially obscured by the hovering galaxy map. "Pressly, give Joker what he needs to bring us in close to that planet. I want to do a surface scan, see if they crashed."

Pressly's frustration was clearer with each passing day. "Permission to speak freely, ma'am?"

"Denied," she said pleasantly. "If the ladar interference is this bad, Joker's going to need your help."

Her X.O. made a sound of disgust and turned back to his terminal, angrily punching in her orders.

Shepard tossed the datapad back onto the pile- both Lowe and Bakari winced as several slid clear off the counter- and headed for the bridge. "Let me know when we've got something."

Joker's reaction was predictable, until she offered to relent if the flying was simply too tricky. Then she couldn't have pulled him off the task with a signed order from Parliament and a strong sedative. He was still grumbling about it when they pulled into orbit. "'Too complicated', she says. Like walking through a park."

"You don't think we came up on the planet a little fast?" Shepard couldn't resist.

Joker scoffed. "Well, I had to make it exciting somehow!"

There was some muffled laughter from the bridge's other two occupants, his co-pilots, who only recently regained blood flow to their faces as they watched Joker take the _Normandy _right up to the hairy edge of orbital insertion. Shepard was no helmsman, but she could read the trajectory data _Normandy's _VI hashed together in a plot, and for a moment there it did look like Joker wouldn't be able to shed the excess speed. But, like always, he managed.

"Good work," she said, and retreated to the CIC.

She saw the furtive looks as she located her datapad and resumed work. _This is the last attempt,_ she promised herself, and them, silently. There were no further leads. Presuming the residual eezo was a crash signature gave them a location on Edolus' surface to start scanning. This final exercise would take a few hours at most- there was no point in scanning the whole of the planet.

Shepard was on the verge of informing Pressly to make ready to depart the system as soon as the scans completed, when Bakari started yelling and pointing at his terminal. "Look at that! Look at that signal!"

Suddenly, it seemed like half the CIC was clustered around him. Shepard pushed her way to the front and peered over her shoulder. Her face lit up. "Is that what I think it is, serviceman?"

"Yes, ma'am, Alliance distress signal." Bakari was grinning ear to ear. "All this interference must have choked it out."

There was a cheer from the collective crowd, and some scattered applause. Shepard raised her voice, though she was smiling too. "Settle down! Bakari, can we transmit back?"

"Already trying. This is an automated broadcast, though. They might not have a two-way transponder strong enough for communication."

She glanced across the CIC. "Someone get me some pictures down there."

"On their way, ma'am," someone called.

Shepard spent a few impatient minutes refreshing her datapad. Other than Bakari and the scanning team, nobody was even pretending to work anymore. Everyone crowded round to wait with her.

Finally, with almost painful slowness, an image emerged. It was a top-down view of some kind of vehicle. After a few seconds, Shepard recognized it as one of the old M-29 tanks, forerunners of the Mako, affectionately known as "grizzlies". _Normandy _was graced with state-of-the-art equipment, but the rest of the Alliance was not always so lucky. It appeared heavily damaged.

The next course of action was obvious. "Get these coordinates to our helmsman. We're setting down."

The momentary double-gravity as the _Normandy _settled on the surface was disconcerting, as always, before the ship VI discreetly turned off the generator. What looked like easily half the crew had found suits and breather helmets, waiting on the lower deck for the main hatch to open. Well, let 'em. No hostiles, or indeed life of any kind, registered in the area. It couldn't hurt to let them stretch their legs and it might make puzzling out this scene easier.

They burst onto the surface of Edolus. The place was a wasteland, green-tinged sunlight filtering down through angry banks of clouds and airborne dust from the high winds whipping over the rock. Craters in all range of sizes dotted the ground, and the sky was streaked with meteor trails as clutter caught in the gravity loop between the two planets fell to earth.

Shepard only just convinced the lot of them to stay back while she approached the tank, pistol drawn. Without any idea what to expect, a crowd was undesirable.

Large scars raked the vehicle roof, the paint scraped away like apple peelings. Dents pockmarked the surface. Some of them were half Shepard's size. It was almost as if something picked up the multi-ton M29 and tossed it around like a beach ball.

The turret mount was nearly torn from the roof. It was doubtful the antenna remained functional, which left the location of the distress signal a mystery. Shepard crept around to the other side.

A soldier hung halfway out of the open hatch under a heavy layer of dust. Her helmet lay on the ground beneath her, still snagged in her hand, and her blonde hair swayed in the nitrogen wind, obscuring her face. Peering into the depths of the cabin revealed another soldier beside her, slumped in his couch.

Shepard knelt beside her and blew out a long breath, unsurprised but disappointed all the same.

Her comm crackled in her ear, requesting a status update. Being out of line of sight behind the vehicle under these circumstances made her crew nervous, and they were impatient already regarding their find. Shepard ignored it for the time being. Two marines of nine… where were the others? Where was the ship? One tank isolated without explanation on the surface of this dusty, violent world couldn't be all that was left.

She was still studying the dead woman when a figure came around the corner, faltering a step as the bodies came into view. Shepard glanced up at him briefly, her arms resting on her thighs as she squatted beside the vehicle, before sliding her eyes back. "Coming to check up on me?"

"Do you always refuse to respond to comm hails in unknown situations?" Alenko joined her on the ground, examining the scene. His voice was staticky inside her helm- the interference on the surface was clearly at least as bad as from space. "The hatch wasn't forced. What happened here?"

"Hypercapnia," Shepard said grimly.

"Carbon dioxide poisoning."

"Yeah." She picked up the woman's helmet and turned it over in her hands. "Their air recirc'd until it couldn't anymore- scrubbers get dirty, equipment fatigues, it's not meant to be run constantly for weeks on end. As the CO2 levels rose, they became disoriented and panicky. In that state, when you feel like you can't breathe, the logical thing to do is open the door and let in fresh air."

"But it's not an oxygenated planet," Alenko protested.

Shepard shook her head. "They weren't a condition to remember that."

He blew out a breath, and looked away from the scene, out across the desert. "You know a lot about this?"

"We pride ourselves on being prepared for anything." There was perhaps a touch more irony in her tone than was truly warranted. Shepard stood, brushing the dust from her hardsuit, and carefully pushed the woman back into her couch, setting the helmet on her lap. There was no reason anyone had to find her hanging down like that.

Alenko was still peering at the horizon. "What's left of the tank trail leads north."

"Not sure we'll find much there. They were running from something. If the tank got torn up here, there'd be more than wheel tracks on the ground."

He folded his arms and raised his eyebrows. "Worth a look?"

"Worth a look," she concurred. She walked back towards the anxious crew with Alenko in tow. "Alright, we've still got seven missing. I want a general search of the area. Spread out, stay in pairs, and radio back if you find anything."

She didn't want to move the whole ship quite yet. If one tank made it away, there was no reason not to believe other crew might have escaped and fled in the same direction. For her own part, Shepard resumed her study of the tank while the others fanned out around her. The damage was strangely familiar, like she'd seen similar wrecks before, but in this alien setting she couldn't quite place it. The connection danced just out of reach.

Private Chase interrupted her thoughts over the comm. "We've got something."

She immediately turned away from the tank, musing forgotten. "Report."

"It's not much, ma'am. There are some odd markings in the sand out here. Kind of broad, and… swooping?" The private relayed a video feed.

Edolus was a dust-coated ball of rock. In theory, the surface should be groomed by wind to a smooth zen-garden finish. However, in this spot, there were large, rounded contours forming s-shapes against the wind, interspersed with a handful of odd circular depressions that mixed broken rock with the sand. Her stomach twisted into a knot.

Before she could open her mouth, the comm crackled with the grim voice of Urdnot Wrex.

"Maw sign," he growled.

_Dark, hot, and sticky was the only way to describe Akuze. Even nightfall brought scant relief from the humidity. That was why she'd been awake. It was raining when she at last climbed down from the trees, as dawn crept over the ruin of the camp. Their tents lay in shredded disarray like fallen butterflies. Even their heavy transports were tossed like toys, dented and scratched, and all around them furrows a solid two meters across were carved into the mud._

It was the silence she remembered most. The utter stillness where there were once fifty people and all their electronics and machines, reduced to the soft hiss of rain.

There was some dry humor in having been kept up for days on end by one nightmare only to be broadsided by another. It must have shown on her face, because the crew nearest Shepard were giving her quite strange looks indeed. Or maybe her connection to Akuze, where thresher maws claimed nearly three hundred human lives between the colonists and the marines, was sufficient on its own.

She ignored them and focused on Wrex. "Can you tell where they came from?"

"North," he said, confirming her suspicion.

A murmur ran through the crew, laced with a little fear.

"Are they coming _back_?" one of the engineers hissed, before her friend shushed her.

Bakari pushed his way forward, his expression earnest behind the faceplate of his suit. "Ma'am, we finally managed to trace the distress signal more precisely. All this damn interference…"

"Let me guess. North as well?"

He nodded. "Aye, ma'am."

"Alright." She surveyed the anxious group. "Wrex and I are going north to find this beacon in the mako."

Joker, who was following from the bridge, interrupted. "You don't want to take the _Normandy_, ma'am?"

"I'm not setting us down in a potential thresher maw nest." Shepard was firm on that point. "Alenko, coordinate the search here. If any other marines got away, I want to find them. Nobody is to wander off alone."

He saluted. "Yes, ma'am."

"Wrex." Her eyes found the krogan. Standing head and shoulders above the humans, he was hard to miss.

His voice was eager as he holstered his shotgun. "Right behind you, Shepard."

They pulled out of the ship and rumbled away, the cratered terrain crunching under their wheels.

The cabin interior was never roomy, but it became downright claustrophobic when filled with the bulk of an armored krogan. Wrex was forced to scrunch down. His hump banged against the ceiling with every jostle and bump. Shepard concentrated on avoiding the particularly deep pits until her curiosity got the better of her. "How'd you know it was thresher maws?"

"Some of the old stories say the maws were born on Tuchanka." Wrex grunted. "That's the krogan homeworld. Don't know if it's true, but they're sure there now. I earned my place by killing one."

"You're from Tuchanka?"

"Not many other places a krogan's likely to come from. The turians and salarians saw to that. After all we did for them against the rachni." His bitterness was matched only by the latent anger written in the fold of his arms and the set of his snout.

Shepard dimly recalled a news story from while she was on the Citadel commemorating the end of the Rachni Wars. "They seem to be coming around. At least the asari are including krogan in the memorials, and there's that giant statue in the Presidium, right?"

He stared in disbelief. "Coming around? We've still got the damn genophage on us!"

"The fuck is a genophage?" She steered them past a jagged boulder. The sandy ground of their landfall was giving way to rolling hills of banded green-gray rock.

"And here I thought you were smart." He sounded like he didn't know whether to laugh or smack her. "The genophage is what's killing my people. The salarians invented it. It ensures not more than one in a thousand children is born alive. Keeps our numbers down, keeps us weak." Wrex snorted disgust. "And what did the turians get for deploying it? A damned council seat."

"The genophage ended the krogan rebellions." Shepard hadn't believed there was anything left in galactic history that could shock her. "Bloody hell. That's ruthless."

"That's just the beginning. With no future, most of the krogan go out into the galaxy and get themselves killed, as mercenaries or worse. Tuchanka's a ruin. People cling to the worst parts of the old ways like it'll save them. Hah."

"If it's a medical problem, why don't the krogan invent a cure?" Shepard glanced at the krogan. "I mean, no offense Wrex, but it's been what, a thousand years?"

"Fourteen hundred," he said grimly. "Look at us, Shepard. We're not scientists. We're warriors! I'd've thought you of all people would understand that."

"Me of all people."

"You have the blood, the gut and the instinct. It's written all over you. You can't change what you are anymore than the krogan."

Her mouth settled into a hard line. "That's awfully deterministic."

He laughed. It only served to annoy her. "I'd love to know why everyone seems so damned obsessed with putting me into a neatly labeled box, like 'warrior' or 'hero' or 'survivor'. It's like you all think I'm cut out of paper."

"Alright." His predatory grin widened. "You got a home somewhere?"

"Not the point. Plenty of soldiers don't have a permanent address."

"What about a hobby?"

"I read," she said defensively.

"Nah, that's something you do when you get bored. I'm talking about a passion."

"Cars, then. I like cars."

"Like. Sounds like enthusiasm." Wrex snorted. "Family? Kids?"

She gave him a withering look. "Well you know, I thought about it, and then I realized Hahne-Kedar doesn't make baby holsters that coordinate with a hardsuit."

He spread his hands. "Well, Shepard. I don't know how people get the impression you're exactly what you seem to be."

Shepard glared. "Right now, I feel myself becoming passionate about sticking my boot up your ass."

His roaring laugh filled the cabin until the instruments shook. Shepard drove onward in chilly silence, wrapped in the remaining shreds of her dignity. Wrex had enough grace to let her, though the occasionally guffaw continued to escape his lips.

After awhile, he straightened in his seat- at least, as much as he could. "Think we're coming up on it."

More of the strange holes and curved markings were evident in the dust ahead. Shepard read they were the precursors of where the maws emerged from underground, their upper bodies disturbing the ground as they rose to the surface. Once the bulk of the maw was past, they collapsed into the patterns they saw. Her experience was somewhat less concrete. In the dark, the maws were all noise and currents in the air.

Shepard pulled the mako onto a stable patch of ground and they disembarked, weapons drawn. It was hard to imagine against what- anything the size of a thresher maw would laugh at a handheld gun- but the weight was reassuring in her hands.

It wasn't much of a hike to the site of the attack. Nor was there any mistaking the devastation. Shepard realized immediately they'd never know if they found all the remaining soldiers or not; there were too many parts missing. That, too, was an altogether too familiar sight.

She knelt next to a roughed-up patch of rock and brushed her fingers against the markings. The wheels on the M29 were designed to operate in all terrains, all atmospheres or none, through arid deserts and rushing streams. It left its touch when it peeled away from a location at the speed the two marines she found earlier were gunning.

Wrex surveyed the scene impassively. The lack of theatrics was refreshing. The most he said was, "This is a bad way to die. But why were they here? There's nothing but dirt."

"I don't know." She straightened and took a look around. "Something must have drawn them. They were looking for any sign of what happened to Banes."

The ground rumbled. Shepard paused mid-step, arching a brow at Wrex.

He didn't look pleased. "They can sense vibrations. Footsteps, if it's near enough to the surface."

Shepard pulled up the Bakari's ladar trace, fed to her omni-tool. "Then let's find the source of the distress signal and get the hell out of here. It should tell us something, at least."

"It's not coming from them?"

She shook her head. "No, they don't have any equipment left out here that would put out an automated distress."

They spread out. If her steps fell more carefully as she picked her way across the field of slaughter, Wrex declined to comment. Indeed, the heavy krogan seemed more cautious himself, his head snapping around with every rumble of the earth- not panicked, but deeply concerned.

After awhile, Wrex called out. "There's a large area newly cleared. Looks like a landing zone, but no sign of any ship."

"I should be standing on top of that signal." Shepard frowned, staring at her omni-tool. She took another step. Her boot thumped against metal.

"What is it?"

"Not sure." She brushed the dust clear. The surface was dirty white, scoured by the endless wind, and as she continued shifting sand a symbol emerged. "There's some kind of insignia."

Gradually it became clearer. Wrex came over to investigate, frowning. Shepard glanced up at him. "Do you recognize it?"

It was a stylized, elongated hexagon done up in black and bracketed by angular orange flourishes. Wrex grunted. "I know every merc insignia from here to clear across the Terminus, and I've never seen anything like that."

"Hmm." She found the edge of the box. "Locked. Mechanically. How pedestrian."

Shepard stood up and backed off a few paces, drawing her pistol.

Wrex threw out his arm. "I don't think that's-"

She fired two clean shots into the latch. The lock went flying. "You were saying?"

The ground rumbled again, louder, coming up through their boots. The krogan's eyes flew wide. "Are you out of your mind?"

Unconcerned, she knelt once more and prised off the cover. It came loose entirely in her hands, and she laid it to the side, peering at the contents. "Definitely a transmitter."

Shepard took a few pictures. The tremors were becoming constant now, messing up her shots. "Damn it."

Wrex started walking back towards the mako.

"Where are you going?" she called.

He looked over his shoulder. "I didn't sign up to get eaten by a maw, which is what's going to happen if we don't get our asses out of here."

Shepard started to make a snarky reply, but the next tremor nearly knocked her from her feet, forcing to swallow the words. Instead she snagged the cover. "If you insist."

They didn't bother with caution as they ran for the mako, every pounding footstep punctuated by miniature earthquakes. The ground began to deform into a massive rising ridge like a tidal wave of earth and rock. Neither bothered to trim their speed as they approached the vehicle, slamming head on into the sides and scrambling at the hatch. Wrex disappeared inside and Shepard threw herself after.

It took only a second to fire up the engine, ignoring the scarlet "door ajar" warning painted across the hepatic interface. Her hands flew furiously as she worked the controls to turn it and stomped the accelerator.

The hills worked against them, cutting their speed every time they flew over a ridge and free fell back to ground. Something tore at their rear.

"It's right behind us," Wrex growled.

Shepard swiped the override for the retrorockets. "I know, damn it!"

The next time they crested a rise, she ignited the rockets in a split second burst that threw them up into the air- but conserved some of their forward momentum. For an endless moment, they sailed through the air as carelessly as a bit of litter.

The ground came up fast. The impact threatened to send them both through the windshield, all six wheels still spinning, and were immediately slammed back in their couches as they bit into the ground. Wrex's helmet slammed against the bulkhead, causing him to lose his grip on his shotgun. It rolled around on the floor.

They accelerated smoothly. The bulk of the thresher maw registering on their ladar began to recede into a dot. Shepard's breath was loud inside her helmet.

Wrex felt along the top of his own, as if checking for cracks. "You're fucking crazy."

His tone was torn between anger and admiration. She sat back, biting her lip against laughter and practically shaking from the adrenaline pouring through her veins, and concentrated on driving. "I gave it a face full of rocket fumes, though."

"They eat metal," he grunted. "I don't think it cares." But a reluctant chuckle haunted the edges of his words.

Somehow, the transmitter lid was still settled in her lap. She spared it a glance. _I hope it was worth it._

They rolled back into the _Normandy's _landing zone at an almost sedate seventy kph, kicking up dust. Several of the search parties had deployed instruments on the ground, and stopped fussing over their readings long enough to point, drawing attention to their commander's return. Shepard pulled up to the rear hatch ramp and left the mako running as she climbed down.

Lieutenant Alenko was in the middle of consulting several charts of the surface with Specialist Lowe when Shepard sauntered over. They both paused mid-conversation and saluted.

"At ease," she said.

Alenko raised his eyebrows. "Find anything?"

"Just this." She tossed him the lid. "It was covering a transmitter box sending out an Alliance distress call."

"But this isn't an Alliance device." His confusion lasted only moments, as he turned it over in his gloves, until a grim understanding dawned. "They were lured there."

Shepard crossed her arms and watched Wrex climb down from the Mako, ambling towards a ground team. "Looks that way. Their ship was long gone, and that thing was planted right on top of a thresher maw nest. Nobody survived."

Lowe blanched and glanced away. Alenko continued studying the lid. "You think whoever planted this stole their ship? What's the point?"

"Maybe just that, maybe something worse." She shrugged. "It's not a high traffic system. I think they didn't want anyone finding out whatever it was Banes saw."

"Should we try to recover the bodies?"

She shook her head. "Too risky. The maw's still there, we're short the hull space, and the bodies aren't really… in good condition for transport."

Behind her faceplate, Lowe was white as a sheet. "I think I'll just… ma'am," she excused herself hurriedly, running back into the ship, hand pressed to helmet like she was going to be sick.

"Bad way to go," Alenko remarked soberly.

"I don't know," Shepard said, almost to herself.

_A cold ship, drifting with aching slowness through the void towards an artificial line of safety, full of silence and hunger._

_Screams and hissing roars in the night, peppered with futile gunfire, filling her ears as she splashed through the mud and rain._

Two fates, one of despair and one of chaos, ice and fire. Shepard shivered and turned back towards the hatch, looking out over the surface.

Alenko was puzzled. "Ma'am?"

"I was honestly expecting to find a derelict ship." She gave a little laugh and shook her head, looking down at her feet. "This… is better than that."

He still looked confused, so she took a stab at elaboration. "This was quick, and they had something to fight, right up to the end. Other than our two escapees, they weren't left waiting to die."

"You don't think it would be better to just drift away quietly?"

Shepard wrapped her arms around herself. "No."

He regarded her a moment. "You're a very odd person." He coughed. "Ma'am."

"I like to think it's more that most people haven't experienced both options." She turned toward him with a half-smile. "Or maybe I'm just crazy."

Alenko processed that, putting the pieces together, just enough to see the shape of what she couldn't say. "That must've been a hell of a mission, whatever it was."

The half-smile briefly became a whole smile. She started up the ramp. "Call in the teams. There's nothing more to do here. This damn suit's starting to itch."


	20. Chapter 20

"It's not going to be that bad," Shepard stated confidently as the elevator descended from the Alliance docking bay.

Liara swallowed, once, twisting her hands. God knew how, but she'd cobbled together a kind of suit from what was available on the _Normandy_. Going to see the Council wasn't an everyday experience for the young archaeologist.

If they'd found survivors on Edolus, maybe Shepard could have held them off a little longer. As it was, the Council was about as unhappy with her as Saren and Benezia. She was fresh out of political maneuverability in her fragile relationship with the three councilors. It was enough to make her tear her hair out. And Liara was caught in the middle.

Shepard made another stab at reassurance. "All they want is to ask you a few questions."

"But I don't have any answers for them." Liara's blue eyes were wide.

"Then it ought to be a quick meeting." Shepard flashed a smile that failed to reach her.

At that moment, the doors slid open, revealing about thirty reporters, twice as many cameras, and half a million flashes. They surged forward, their questions blurred together into a solid wall of sound that pressed Shepard back a step, blinking in surprise. "Commander! Commander Shepard!"

"Why is there no news on Eden Prime?"

"What made the Council select YOU as a spectre?"

Liara shrank against the far wall of the elevator. Shepard couldn't see any other way out; going up just led straight back to the _Normandy._ Shepard reached back and put an arm around Liara's shoulders. "Take a deep breath. We're going through."

They plunged into the crowd, Shepard barreling forward like a laser, dragging Liara with her.

Voices like piranha enveloped them. "Commander, is it true geth are on a _second _colonial world?"

"It's been weeks. How do you answer for the dead of Eden Prime?"

Shepard knew she should ignore them, but that just pissed her off. She snarled an answer without breaking stride. "I didn't cause Eden Prime."

"Who's the asari?"

"The council has you on a short leash. How do you explain their appropriation of a human asset?"

The crowd was moving with them, their electronic equipment whirring. Liara's head was tucked into her chest with her eyes almost entirely shut against the onslaught. Shepard tightened her arm. "If you're talking about my ship, the _Normandy _goes where I say, when I say it, period."

That was a mistake. The journalists pounced on it, smelling blood. "So you're a rogue now? Don't you have your own superiors, Commander?"

"Aren't most of those superiors aliens now?"

"Has being made a spectre gone to your head?"

The elevator up to the Presidium was in sight. It was a restricted-access area, the horde of reporters would be unable to follow. Shepard made for it with steady determination.

"Is it true that _another _spectre attacked Eden Prime?"

She punched the call button, and stared at the doors for a moment before turning with a deliberate click of her heels. "His name is Saren Arterius. He's traveling in a geth dreadnought, whether as their leader or as a valued ally is unclear. The Council tasked me with bringing him in."

Cameras clicked and for the first time since they arrived there was dead silence in the hall. One of the journalists, a woman in the long, close-fit dresses fashionable on the Citadel, cleared her throat. "That's very curious. The Council has refused to confirm those reports, much less name the perpetrator."

The elevator dinged. Shepard stepped aboard, selected the lake level, and deadpanned. "Oops."

The doors shut. The carriage ascended smoothly, picking up speed.

Liara was shaking like a leaf. Shepard rubbed her face and let out a long breath, letting the wall take her weight. "I wasn't expecting that. I'm sorry. I would have sent you after and gone alone."

"Your people are very angry, aren't they."

"If an asari colony were attacked, and the Council wrote it off as an unfortunate accident beyond the scope of their office, wouldn't yours?"

Liara bit her lip. "But the geth truly aren't under the Council's control."

"Thus making them a threat to everyone, not just humans." Shepard rubbed her forehead, tired of the argument. "It wasn't the geth, Liara. It was a turian who somehow won the geth to his side. You weren't there. You didn't see it."

She glanced at Shepard sidelong. "Not only the reporters are angry."

"You're damn right I am."

The elevator doors opened, a short distance from the tall spire where the Council conducted its business. The two women began walking. Liara seemed to need to fill the silence with a change of subject. "You don't think it will be a full session, do you?"

"Well, I'm new to Citadel politics, but I doubt it'll be that formal. If nothing else they won't want to be on public record accusing Benezia of anything." Shepard crammed her hands in her pockets, her stomach turning over. God, but she hated politics. "My guess is that it'll be a closed meeting without underlings or grandstanding."

"Even when we were on good terms, my mother never shared much of her work with me. She always said that childhood was a time for wonder and exploration, not dreariness and drudgery."

"You're old enough to have a doctoral degree, and a career as a researcher. You scarcely qualify as a child."

Liara blushed. "The asari count time differently. It wasn't even that we fought… it was that she was so… so patronizing even when we disagreed. She spent her whole life fixated on the future, and I committed myself to understanding the past. All she did was laugh a little and tell me 'it's in the nature of daughters to rebel against their mothers'." Her voice took on a different tone, as though she were imitating someone else.

Shepard's laugh was dry. "I rather think my mother would have been happier if I'd rebelled in such a cultured and respectable way."

"It wasn't rebellion." Liara was earnest. "This is my passion, since I truly was a child, and it was never more than an idle hobby in her eyes."

Shepard nodded, content to leave it at that, but the words spilled out of Liara's mouth, one after the other, out of nerves or just the churning of her own thoughts since Therum. "Everyone always expected so much of me. When I was born, my mother was already a well-respected matriarch. Sometimes I felt as though no matter what I did, I could never live up to that."

An inkling of understanding percolated through her brain. "And no matter how distant or isolated your dig, you still can't escape her reputation."

Liara chuckled, shaking her head. "It seems not. I find I am much better suited to ruins than people, I'm afraid."

They reached the next elevator, taking them up to the Council chamber and submitted to the VI scan. "Oh, I don't know. You seem to do alright."

A tremulous smile. "Now if I can just avoid expelling my stomach on their shoes."

Shepard laughed, genuinely this time. Liara wrapped her arms about herself and took a deep breath, sinking back into her thoughts as the elevator ascended the last several floors. She paled visibly as the doors opened on the gardens and stumbled a bit leaving the elevator carriage, her feet tangling about themselves.

Shepard caught her. "Hey. It's going to be alright. I'll be there the whole time, I promise."

The archaeologist took a second breath, and nodded once. They proceeded into the chamber. Soon, an asari assistant came to collect them, taking them as predicted into the back halls of the spire, to a small but well-appointed conference room where the three councilors already waited on the far end of a polished table of blonde wood.

Shepard put on her dancing shoes and offered a polite bow and an easy smile. "My apologies for keeping you waiting. We were delayed at the docking bay."

"Commander Shepard." Councilor Tevos inclined her head, accepting the excuse with customary asari grace. She gestured at the table. "Please, be seated."

They settled into their chairs, Shepard adjusting the tunic of her dress blues, which were seeing altogether too much use these days, and Liara folding her hands on the table. The doctor tapped her fingers once before she caught herself.

Tevos continued, "I wanted to thank you, Dr. T'Soni, for agreeing to appear here today."

Liara's smile was false and fleeting. She said nothing. Shepard watched the turian councilor, Velarn. His beady eyes were flashing with a dangerous humor, the same as when Saren appeared before them to protest his innocence. Velarn still rankled from her promotion and Saren's demise. It wouldn't surprise her if he was seeking payback.

However, it was the salarian who next spoke. "We were quite surprised- and curious- to learn that your honored mother, Matriarch Benezia, may be involved in Saren Arterius' plans, whatever they may be."

"I haven't spoken to my mother in many years, despite her best attempts to mend things." Liara managed to speak clearly, without trembling. "I'm sorry to disappoint you."

Velarn pounced on this opening. "Saren must have planned this treachery for nearly as long. You expect us to believe that you had no inkling of her intentions?"

"Councilor Velarn." Tevos lay a hand on his arm. "Please. I am certain Dr. T'Soni's intent is honorable."

The salarian's double-lidded eyes twitched. "Are you? She is an expert on the very technology Saren and Benezia are seeking for reasons unknown. The asari value family. She was found at one of the most extensive Prothean ruins discovered in the past twenty years."

Shepard cleared her throat. "As I'm certain you noted in my report, she was found trapped in those same ruins, having been forced to activate the ruins' defenses to save herself from the geth. Does that strike you as evidence of cooperation?"

Velarn hissed. "Yet another story we are conveniently unable to verify thanks to one of your senseless acts of destruction."

Shepard half-rose from her chair. "We did what was necessary to free Liara before the geth could rally. We nearly died down there."

"Councilor, Commander, please." Tevos raised her hand. "I am certain that the Commander acted as she saw best."

"On that, we can agree." Velarn settled back, not disguising his interpretation of what Shepard thought best.

Tevos turned back towards Liara. "Can you tell us what brought you to Therum?"

"My grant request to study the ruins was approved about… two months ago. I made the necessary arrangements and traveled to Therum to undertake an evaluation of the site."

"You came alone?"

"I prefer to work alone." Liara shifted in her seat, primly. "Graduate students merely get in the way."

"I can sympathize." Tevos flipped through her datapad. "What drew you to the Therum dig?"

"It is- was- thought to be one of the youngest Prothean ruins, constructed not long before they vanished from the galaxy." She flattened her palms on her knees. "Believe me, Councilors, nobody regrets its loss more than I. Commander Shepard's actions were necessary."

Councilor Jaeten folded his hands on the table. "The demise of the Prothean Empire is your area of expertise, is it not?"

Liara nodded. Jaeten continued, his interest keen. "And what do you make of Commander Shepard's theory? These so-called Reapers?"

The asari scientist glanced at the commander. Shepard gave her the faintest of nods, telling her to go on. She straightened and addressed the salarian, drawing a breath. "I have seen no direct evidence of a super-race of sentient machines, if that is what you are asking. But they fit into the pattern I have observed- one Prothean site after another ravaged, and then wiped clean of all evidence afterwards. Somebody was responsible, somebody powerful, and just as absent as the Protheans themselves."

"Clearly, she's been coached." Velarn's contempt came immediately. "Shepard keeps her isolated for nearly two weeks, on the pretext of chasing down a handful of lost Alliance soldiers having no bearing on her mission, and now she comes before us and trots out this story?"

Shepard stood and laid her hands flat on the table, a hot comeback rising in her throat, but before she could get a word out, Liara answered with chill dignity, deeply affronted. "I think you'll find I have been stating exactly that in my published research for at least thirty years. Unless you are suggesting Commander Shepard has mastered the art of time travel…"

Shepard raised an eyebrow. Apparently, challenging Liara's sense of academic honesty was enough to overcome her self-effacement. "Thirty years? Just how old are you?"

"One hundred six," she snapped, still riled.

Shepard blinked. "Damn."

"If we could all calm ourselves," Tevos interjected with fraying patience.

"Doctor," Jaeten pressed, "Do you have any knowledge of this Conduit your mother seeks?"

"I've not heard of anything like it."

It was Velarn's turn to stand. "You expect us to believe that while Saren Arterius and Matriarch Benezia scour the Traverse for a major Prothean artifact, you, one of the leading experts on that race, attest to _no knowledge whatsoever _of it?"

Shepard jabbed a finger in his direction. "We have no idea whether the Conduit even is Prothean. Your people have had the mass relays and all the rest of the wealth of Prothean tech for _how _many centuries and you've never heard of it either. Aside from your traitors, anyway."

"I don't know what your agenda is, Commander, but the 314 Incident is _over_. Geth attacked your colony. Your continued efforts to vilify-"

"I was three years old!" Shepard bellowed. "I don't give a great goddamn what did or didn't happen-"

Tevos stood as well. "If you please-"

Velarn laughed. "Then you are entirely unlike the rest of your Alliance, who can't go two words in public without making mention of it."

She banged her fist on the table hard enough to rattle the pitcher of water. "I _care _that nobody here would be anything but relieved if Saren wiped out half our colonies, nevermind one."

Tevos didn't raise her voice, but her tone was so hard and so cold that it brought instant silence to the room. "We _will_ have order in this chamber."

Liara was a shade of pale green, shrinking in her chair. Shepard took a shaky breath. "I apologize for my outburst. It was inappropriate."

Velarn began a cutting remark, but Tevos fixed him with the kind of glare that left lesser men babbling on their knees. He swallowed and resumed his seat, stiffly. "I also apologize."

Tevos folded her hands and turned a hard stare on Shepard. "Commander, incidents such as these are why we have spectres like you. Saren's was an act of terrorism. As history has proven, bringing the weight of government to bear on isolated rogue elements is not only ineffective but counter-productive. If you wish answers for the loss of Eden Prime, you will have to find them yourself."

She swallowed as well. "Understood."

"Very well." They all settled back into their chairs. Tevos allowed a delicate pause for everyone to relocate their bearings before continuing, smoothly. "Speaking of which, we are all curious as to what you intend to do next."

That question was more in her element. She rolled her shoulder. "Liara is attempting to guess at where her mother might have gone. That will hopefully yield a number of systems or worlds to investigate."

"So you've spent more than a month on this exercise and you've got nothing to show for it."

"The Traverse is a big place, ma'am. We're pursuing a number of leads." Shepard kept her expression carefully neutral, keeping their lack of progress hidden. She had no better idea of where to head next than of how to fly.

From the look Tevos gave her in return the effort was meaningless. "I see. So your hopes rest on this young woman."

Tevos wasn't willing to quite call Liara a danger or a traitor while she was sitting right there, but her meaning was clear. Shepard's response was measured. "I know my work, ma'am. I know where to place my trust."

"Do you?" It was the most cynical statement Shepard ever heard from the asari councilor. "I believe, then, we are finished for now." She inclined her head. "Our thanks for your attention, Commander."

"I always do my duty." Shepard only just managed to keep the sentence from absolutely dripping with sarcasm. They rose again as the Councilors took their leave of the Chamber.

Into the quiet that followed, Shepard said, absently, "I was wrong. That was as bad as I thought."

"Well," Liara said, standing and straightening her clothes. "At least we're leaving with our heads."

Shepard stared at her and started to laugh. Soon they were both dissolved in helpless giggles, when there came a sharp rap on the door. The asari assistant re-entered, to show them out, and pursed her lips with disapproval. "If you'll follow me."

They were deposited without ceremony at the lake level of the Presidium. The keeper they spent some time discussing on their last visit was gone, its maintenance or whatever it was working at complete. Shepard began searching for a taxi stand. They passed the odd monument, near one of the bridges across the lake, the one that looked like a mass relay.

Liara spared it a glance. "The relays were the Prothean's greatest achievement. Can you imagine what it must have been like when they first developed the technology? To live through being bound to only a handful of worlds, and suddenly have the galaxy opened to you?"

"I don't have to imagine." Shepard crossed her arms and looked up the length of the mock relay. "That was only five years before I was born, for humans. I've lived it."

"It must have been painstaking. Dragging each relay across the cold dark of space, even at FTL speeds. It's twenty years across the galaxy without accounting for fuel or resupply." Liara gazed up at it with something like wonder. "It's no wonder they built a monument to the effort."

Shepard shrugged, not unmoved, but unable to dwell on it. "Mostly, it just makes my head buzz. It's irritating."

"Does it?" Liara seemed surprised. "It rather reminds me of Thessia. I can't think of why. Something about the air here, I think."

"I guess it's good I've never been to Thessia then," Shepard said shortly. "Come on. Let's head back. The sooner we're off this station the happier I'll be."

They reached the taxi stand and were awaiting pickup when a short man approached the pair, human, his blonde hair and goatee as ill-cut as his old blue suit was ill-fit. His blue eyes were wide with excitement. "C-Commander Shepard?"

"What?" she said crossly.

"Oh my god, it really is you." He beamed, a smile threatening to split his head in two. "I've read every article, you know. They can't stop writing about you. You're the kind of person that makes humanity great!"

Her brow furrowed. "I'm sorry, do we know each other?"

"I'm Conrad. Conrad Verner." He seized her hand unprovoked with both his own, shaking it violently. "It's such an honor to meet you. Here I was, on the Citadel for some stupid conference, I never imagined I'd run into you!"

Shepard reclaimed her hand and discreetly wiped his slimy sweat off on her skirt. Liara was studying the man with the same air as an entomologist encountering a new breed of insect. The commander craned her neck, hoping for a glimpse of their taxi. "I guess it's your lucky day."

"Aw, my wife is never going to believe it." He started scrambling about his person, checking all his pockets until he fished out a miniature datapad. "Do you… do you think I could get your autograph? I'm a huge fan, always have been, even visited the memorial on Akuze."

"Uhh…" Shepard glanced around, but no salvation was imminent. "I… sure, whatever."

She took the pad and dashed off her name. _Lt. Cdr. Nathaly Shepard, SSV Normandy_. To her embarrassment, he hugged it to his chest and bounced on his feet. "Thank you! I'll never forget this!"

"Oh, I hope that's not the case." She forced a smile. "I think that's our cab now."

She escaped the last of his praises by ducking into the car. Liara followed. The door closed smoothly over them and soon the taxi whisked them high into the false Presidium sky. Liara's amusement was plain. "Does that happen to you often?"

Shepard covered her face with her hand. "I hate my life."

She expected a wisecrack at her expense, but Liara merely said, "I don't like people either, much of the time. Ruins are easier to understand."

The taxi deposited them at the C-Sec academy. Shepard walked Liara to the elevator. "I think it's best if you head back to the _Normandy_. No one will bother you there, after this morning's news breaks. I've got that interview with the Liakos woman, and then we'll go. Do me a favor and make certain Pressly's ready."

Liara nodded. "I've had enough of reporters for one day."

The elevator shut behind her. Shepard rubbed the bridge of her nose, feeling a headache coming on, and was about to return to the cab when she heard a familiar voice behind her. "Shepard! I did it!"

She glanced over her shoulder, brow furrowed. "Garrus? Detective Vakarian?"

"I quit!" Turian smiles were hard to read, but Garrus was giddy. "I've been thinking about everything."

She gave herself a shake, thoroughly confused. "What?"

"You're absolutely right. We've got to protect the people of this galaxy. It's the obligation of every able citizen." He paced a few steps, gesturing to emphasize his words. "Saren's out there. Nobody here is prepared to let me find him, or fight him. They're too caught up in Citadel politics to care."

"So you… you quit your job?" Shepard was flabbergasted.

"I'm not about to let the Executor stop me from doing my job," he corrected. "The only way to do that was to resign my commission. It's all so very clear."

Shepard was still three steps behind. "And you think I told you to do this?"

"You told me to be part of the solution. That was what you meant, right, when we spoke after calling the dogs off Dr. Michel?" Garrus was alight, as though a tremendous weight was lifted from his shoulders. "And you were right. We need to work together."

"Work together?"

"I'm coming with you."

"Are you." Shepard was considerably less amused by that declaration. She crossed her arms.

"I know more about Saren than anyone alive, or at least anyone who's willing to talk to you. He's not going to stop at a single colony."

"Dammit, don't you think I know that." She was more tired than angry. "What exactly are you proposing?"

"Someone needs to keep him in check."

"So you're inviting yourself aboard my ship."

It was the first thing she said that seemed to penetrate his euphoria. His face twisted in confusion. "Why wouldn't you want me?"

Shepard was at a loss. "I never expected you to quit your job!"

"It's been a long time coming." He looked around the room, which was busy with the traffic of the academy, clicking his mandibles. "This place never suited me. Not really."

"And you think a ship will suit you better." If anything, an Alliance ship was more disciplined environment than Citadel Security.

Garrus held himself a little straighter. "I did my service in the navy of the Hierarchy, Commander. I know how ship life goes. I want Saren. I want justice, for the human colony and the rest of it. I can help you."

Shepard buried her face in her hands and tried to think past the pounding in her head. "Garrus, this isn't a game."

"Believe me, I know." His tone matched hers- tired, exhausted of fighting this contest on uneven ground.

He wasn't wrong. The information he had on Saren could be invaluable. Shepard didn't want to face another Council meeting like the one she just left, with no leads worth mentioning and little progress to report. That was a fast ticket to proving humans had nothing to offer the spectres or galactic security, not to mention it simply would not help Saren's past or future victims in any way.

At the same time, she wasn't happy about being strong-armed into accepting a new member of her crew. Her mouth thinned into a line. "Fine. Get your things. But you damn well remember how to follow an order better than what I've seen here, or so help me Garrus-"

His answering grin was more unsettling than she liked. "I have more faith in you than in C-Sec."

"Not the answer I was looking for."

"We're after the same thing. I won't be a problem." He held out his hand.

She shook it, with some reluctance. "I'll hold you to your word. We're in Docking Bay E-15."

"Roger that." He tossed her a salute that was only faintly mocking and took his leave.

/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\

The interview took several hours. Shepard hadn't expected brevity, but Liakos was very thorough. Hours of sliding from one mask to another, thinking in soundbytes, alternating between canned professionalism and ad-libbed personality left her spent. It wasn't disingenuous- people could spot fake with reliable accuracy- but the art of showing off the parts people expected to see.

So when asked about becoming a spectre, she called it an honor instead of a political maneuver. She showed them the picture her father emailed of the new "SPECTRE01" license plate he bought for her car and omitted the vase of flowers and impersonal card from her mother, because proud and embarrassing fathers were humanizing whereas cold and distant mothers invited psychoanalysis. Humility required a delicate touch; too cocky and she'd be labeled reckless, but at the same time, acting like she'd won the lottery instead of earned a promotion hardly inspired confidence.

Loyalty was the same way. In some regards, that was why she trotted out the occasional Alliance party line. That was Shepard the Good Soldier, who remembered she was human. But it needed to be tempered with Shepard the Diplomat as well, the woman who could make statements like "we are a galaxy made up of many peoples with one Council to see to our diverse needs" without cringing. Shepard the Healer who empathized with the colonists of Eden Prime mixed with Shepard the Warrior who promised them justice.

That was the problem with being the only one of anything- you were expected to be everything. Nevermind that _Nathaly _only wanted to do her job, do it well, protect her crew, and go home in as few pieces as possible. A little of that was acceptable- a disarming smile and an "I'm just a soldier, ma'am" could evaporate a tricky question- but used too often, it sounded like incompetence.

The truth was that she felt the same way as the rest of humanity in the aftermath of Eden Prime. Not scared, perhaps, or helpless, but shocked, outraged, humiliated, and uncertain all fit. Saren had trespassed freely on Alliance soil and nothing she did was going to put the colony back together. The geth's motives remained mysterious. Of the Reapers they knew even less, and Shepard held her silence. There was no reason to disperse that information, or potentially tip off their shadow enemy, until they had more facts than intuition to offer.

So intent was her internal grousing that she almost missed Pressly's frown as she came aboard. It was unusual for him to greet her at the hatch. Normally, he kept to the CIC. She raised an eyebrow. "What's wrong?"

He cleared his throat. "Commander, our departure is being held by Alliance flight control."

"Why?" Their mission had top priority. Previously, even during periods of peak operation, they'd enjoyed being bumped to the head of the line. Then she realized that was the wrong question. "On whose orders?"

They headed towards the CIC. "Rear Admiral Mikhailovich."

Shepard stopped walking, turning towards her navigator. "Fifth Fleet, commander 63rd Scout Flotilla? That Mikhailovich?"

Pressly nodded. Shepard used an expletive that got the attention of half the deck. "Did he grace us with a reason?"

He pursed his lips. "His orders are to wait in dock until morning, so that he can complete an inspection of the ship and its crew for a report to the Joint Military Council. Do you want me to contact Captain Anderson, ma'am?"

"It won't do any good. Mikhailovich is _his _C.O." Shepard leaned back against the galaxy map barrier and rubbed her forehead. "And I can guess what this is all about. He's pissed about losing the _Normandy _to the spectres and plans to raise hell over it."

"If that's so, he's not respecting his own superiors, either. That was Admiral Hackett's decision."

Hackett was the commander of the Fifth Fleet and one of the highest ranking officers within the Systems Alliance Navy. Outfitting her spectre operation fell to him, though thus far, his had been a silent oversight. Shepard kept waiting for the real bill to arrive.

She tapped her fingers on the banister, running down options.

Pressly's suggestion was not at all diplomatic. "Ma'am, we could override the hold, on your spectre authority. Docking is a Citadel matter even if they allow the Alliance to see to their own ships."

Shepard eyed him, surprised. _Maybe there's an X.O. in there after all_. Aloud, she cleared her throat. "It's not a bad idea, but it only delays the problem. Thumbing our nose will only infuriate him, and I can't promise we'll be able to afford it the next time."

"Aye, ma'am. So we wait for morning?"

"We wait," she confirmed. "But we've got all night. I want every inch of this ship looking fresh from dry dock and every soldier on her at their best. Mikhailovich isn't going to find any low-hanging fruit when he starts looking around for something to criticize."


	21. Chapter 21

Rear Admiral Mikhailovich presented himself at their hatch promptly at 0600 hours. He was a short, brooding man, with a heavy brow and dark, thick hair under his admiral's cap.

Shepard was waiting to greet him, alongside Pressly, in a freshly-pressed dress uniform. It was getting so she almost needed two sets of dress blues just to avoid being disheveled. They both saluted smartly as Mikhailovich came aboard.

He returned the salute and sized her up. "Lieutenant Commander."

"Sir." She held herself at attention. "The _Normandy _is at your service. May I introduce my executive officer, Navigator Charles Pressly."

Mikhailovich ignored the courtesies. He glanced around the bridge, his mouth a narrow line gashed into his face. "This overdesigned piece of tin was supposed to be my ship, you know, before you Citadel types got involved."

"I'm aware, sir." Shepard was careful to keep her tone pleasant. "I understand the loss must have been disappointing."

"Disappointing?" He scoffed. "This ship, Commander, is a taxpayer boondoggle and a sign of how open to influence the appropriations committee has become."

"I don't follow you, sir."

He gestured around them, indicating the ship. "A frigate that comes with the price tag of a heavy cruiser! And for what? Some unproven stealth system and a show of inter-species cooperation that let the turians sink their talons into our classified development projects?"

She could _feel _Joker bristling in the couch behind her. Thankfully, he realized when to hold his tongue. "Admiral, I assure you the stealth system is far from unproven. We've already used it successfully in several engagements."

"Battle?" he inquired, bushy eyebrows raised.

She shook her head, shortly. He gave her a grim little smile stuffed with condescension. "Well, let's have a look at her then. See what our folly has bought us."

He turned aft. Pressly and Shepard exchanged a look. She shrugged at him, and followed the admiral into the CIC.

Mikhailovich stopped short at the narrow apex of the map island that dominated the deck. "What is this?"

"Our… it's our combat information center, sir," Shepard replied after a moment, much confused. There wasn't a chance he didn't recognize it.

"I'm not a fool," he said sharply. "I meant this design. What idiot decided to put the commanding officer half the length of the ship away from the bridge?"

She put her hands behind her back and bit her thumbnail into the flesh of her palm to keep her sarcasm at bay. "It's common to turian ships, sir. It has-"

"Turians?" He spat. "Placing our faith in the ships that lost the war?"

Shepard was steadily losing patience. His saliva was congealing on her clean deck, and her CIC personnel were staring fixedly at their terminals. "As I was saying, Admiral, it has its advantages. The deck is designed so that all information flows to this spot."

She stood on the platform before the galaxy map to demonstrate. "From here, the commanding officer has everything she needs to know at her fingertips, and can issue orders promptly."

He crossed his arms. "Too bad nobody will be able to hear them. You may have a ship now, Commander, but you came up through the marines. You're biased towards ground maneuvers. How much _real _space combat have you seen?"

"Enough to know that no commanding officer worth her jacket would allow chatter in the CIC during a battle," she snapped, her temper getting the better of her at last. "And if it _did _come to that, I can bellow with the best of them."

He took a step towards her. That was a mistake; she towered over the burly man. "Are you _gainsaying _me, Commander?"

"No sir," she said evenly. "Just telling you how it is on my ship."

He stared her down for another long moment, before harrumphing and turning towards the stairs. "I suppose we'd better see the rest of it."

Tali was coming off the elevator as they reached the crew deck. "Shepard, Engineer Adams would like to know if the admiral plans to- oh."

The mask hid her face, but Shepard was getting better at reading her body language. The way she drew in on herself just then was definitely a blush.

"Aliens?!" Mikhailovich barked.

"This is Tali'Zorah nar Rayya, a representative of the quarian people." Shepard wasn't going to rise to the bait. Things were about to take an especially ugly turn. "She is a guest aboard this ship."

"Good gods, girl, I thought spectres were supposed to have keen judgment!"

"I fail to see the problem," she lied. "Tali's information led us to Saren in the first place, and she continues to be invaluable to this mission."

That set him back a step. "That's hardly the point."

Shepard managed not to raise her voice. "With all due respect, sir, I don't know what you've heard. But I'm not some fresh-faced _girl _straight out of Macapa. This isn't a ship-to-ship battle that can be determined by firepower and trigonometry. I'm making the best decisions I can with the resources I have to work with, which is exactly what the Alliance we both serve trained me to do."

He scowled at her. She returned it with a calm, almost bored stare, bearing neither insolence nor submission. "Shall we continue, sir? I'm certain the battery will interest you."

The admiral spared Tali a final, loathing glance, but settled his hackles. "Yes, let's proceed to the battery."

They finally stumbled on a portion of the _Normandy _with which Admiral Mikhailovich took no issue. On the contrary, he praised their main cannon, albeit alongside a left-handed reference to the awkward balance of the ship created by the oversized drive core. Like everything else in the design, the cannon was top of the line, cutting edge from Alliance R&D. The hope was that the stealth system would allow the _Normandy _to avoid most combat, but if the worst happened she would not be found defenseless.

Although, having seen Joker's risky approach to flying, Shepard wasn't eager to watch him cowboy his way through a firefight. She wisely chose not to voice this concern to the admiral.

Less fortunately, he caught sight of Liara when they passed through the medbay. "Exactly how many aliens are aboard, Commander?"

"Four, sir. The two you haven't met are a krogan and a turian, respectively."

"A turian!"

"The lead detective into Saren's treason," she explained smoothly."He's… on sabbatical from Citadel Security to assist the Alliance in this matter."

He took off his hat with a long sigh, running his hand over his hair. She almost felt bad for him- he looked so lost. Mikhailovich was old guard, her parents' generation, from the Alliance before they knew anything of the Citadel or aliens. The new era efforts the _Normandy _represented were out of his element.

Surprisingly, it was Pressly who intervened, silent for most of the tour except when asked a direct question. "Admiral, I can vouch that the aliens aboard ship appear to be solely interested in doing their jobs to support the mission. I've not seen nor heard of any suspicious behavior."

That, coming from someone of a more similar mind, seemed to take the fight out of him. Mikhailovich glanced at Shepard. "I take it you concur, Commander?"

"We have enough enemies, Admiral," she said as kindly as she could. "Batarians, terrorists both within and without our borders, _real _traitors, and now geth. It's a big galaxy to be without friends."

"Assuming they're worthy of our friendship. That has yet to be proven." He was gruff, but conceded the argument. "However, I am certain that you will take every precaution."

They continued to the engineering deck. Shepard kept all crew not on sleep rotation during the admiral's visit at their posts, regardless of the roster. It wasn't a good time for anyone to appear idle. But that left the _Normandy's _marine detail in a sticky spot. Their duty didn't take place aboard ship, and truthfully there wasn't much for them to do when they weren't being briefed or deployed, aside from some gear maintenance and the chores shared amongst the whole crew.

Alenko evidently decided to solve that problem by making them run laps around the bay. Williams, having finished her punishment detail at last, was at the head. It occurred to Shepard belatedly that she was the only NCO in their marine detachment, making her second in command for that unit. It was not an entirely comfortable realization.

Alenko was keeping one eye on the elevator while he monitored the exercise. As soon as they stepped off, he called out, "A-ten-HUT!"

Instantly, the group stopped and came to attention facing the admiral and their commander. Shepard made the necessary introductions while Mikhailovich looked over the marines with a critical eye. She definitely got a sense that he hated ground engagements; hated, in fact, any maneuver that lacked the silent, stately grace of ships doing battle against each other out in open space. Shepard found it difficult to sympathize. Before the _Normandy_, she was officially stationed at Arcturus and rarely assigned to any particular ship for more than a few weeks, as she traveled wherever spec ops officers were needed. That rarely included watching ships exchange artillery rounds.

Alenko and the rest of the marines, however, were used to it. A tour of duty ranging from six to eighteen months either aboard a ship or assigned to a colony was a much more typical marine experience. Aside from the carriers, all ships in the Alliance carried at least a token squad of marines. The admiral may not like it, but a good deal of the conflict in the galaxy still took place where the people were- on the ground, in space stations, aboard ships using settlements as shields. That required something slightly more surgical than a mass accelerator cannon. It was also why anyone truly interested in seeing combat enlisted with the marine branch of the navy.

Shepard was strangely grateful that Admiral Mikhailovich understood basic respect and found something positive to say to the marine detail, praising their discipline and drive. Edolus had been hard on a number of them. It was too easy to imagine themselves in the shoes of Kahoku's men. And then there was Alenko himself- he was an easy-going man, but she doubted very much he would have suffered unwarranted or politicized criticism of his people in silence. Injustice seemed to be one of the few things that really got under his skin.

She was thankful also that Garrus kept out of sight. With most of the crew distrustful of a turian, he seemed most at home in the largely abandoned equipment bay. Reason said a former officer of the Hierarchy navy might hold some strong opinions about the quality of the _Normandy's _hybrid design, and it was just as well that the details of Garrus' military past remained unenumerated for the admiral.

The three of them, Shepard, Mikhailovich, and Pressly, continued on to the drive core room, the last stop on their tour. Tali elected to linger on the crew deck. Adams, however, was in the thick of things alongside his engineers. They stopped and saluted as the small party came into the drive core room.

"At ease," Mikhailovich said, folding his arms as he looked up at the bulk of the Tantalus drive, a uniquely engineered system at the heart of the _Normandy's _FTL and stealth systems. Heat sinks were one thing. What made the _Normandy _truly novel was the manner in which it moved while cloaked. The Tantalus core generated mass concentrations along the ship's vector of motion, into which the _Normandy _"fell", obeying the laws of gravity. Then the drive released the pocket of dark energy and created another ahead of the ship. Thus the frigate was able to move forward in absolute secrecy, without a trace of conventional sublight drive flare to betray them.

The _Normandy _had those systems, of course; every ship did for intrasystem propulsion, and the Tantalus could not operate in this mode more than a few hours. It remained an impressive feat.

However, all Mikhailovich had to offer were complaints. "Did you know that you could make twelve _thousand _fighters from this same amount of element zero?"

Shepard gave the drive a glance. It was true that for a ship of this size, the Tantalus was slightly more than twice as large as was customary. "I'd love to see any one of those fighters slip past an advanced geth dreadnought without being spotted, sir, the way _Normandy _did on Eden Prime."

"Your stealth system is a 120 billion credit gimmick." He snorted and crossed his arms, turning his back on the drive. Adams took the criticism well; Shepard imagined he was no stranger to flag officers tromping around his deck without a clue what they were talking about. She herself was rapidly developing an appreciation for Anderson's patience in driving this ship to completion in spite of those who shared Mikhailovich's doubts.

However, she did not share it.

Shepard drew her hands behind her back and kept her attention on the core. "Men of limited vision have always denounced new technology as wasteful, sir."

Mikhailovich spared her a glance laced with enough venom to stun a varren. "I'm not happy, Commander."

"That seems to be a fairly common problem," she shot back before she could stop herself.

His mouth fixed itself into an ugly grimace. "And allowing your mouth to run away with you seems to be _your _problem. See to it, or it's going to get you in all kinds of trouble."

Mikhailovich's eyes dared her to respond. She swallowed the unpalatable anger, a taste of metal in her mouth, and allowed the reprimand to pass unchallenged. On his face, disappoint mixed with grudging respect.

Adams put his hand over his mouth and turned towards a terminal, pretending to fuss over a sensor reading. If she didn't know better she'd swear he was trying not to laugh.

Shepard squared her shoulders and tried again, more diplomatically. "Stealth capability _redefined_ aerial combat in the twentieth century. Those who possessed the technology to slip past enemy defenses without taking losses were able to dominate the world. Governments poured far greater sums into gaining even small improvements in their observables, when you account for inflation, than what we've spent developing the _Normandy_. Because back then, that was the difference between life and death."

Adams wasn't laughing anymore. He gave her a startled look, surprised by her understanding. "The Commander's right, sir. The world never was the same, not until spaceflight and mass effect fields replaced airplanes and chemical propulsion. Nobody's ever made stealth work for spacecraft. There's no reason to believe it won't have the same devastating effect on strategy- and with the _Normandy_, the Alliance is on the bleeding edge."

The admiral rubbed his chin. "It's a moot point. Because this ship was developed under Council oversight, any advantage the stealth system might have provided is lost."

Adams was quick to counter the point. "Sir, I was involved in the later stages of design. We didn't give away the farm."

"Involving the Council proved that humans are able to think outside the box," Shepard argued. "Just like with our fighter carriers. It shows the Council that we have something to offer, and improves our chances of being more fairly represented in the galaxy."

Mikhailovich turned back towards the drive core, deep in thought. "Do you think the technology can be made practical?"

"Yes." Adam's answer came immediately. "Once you've solved the basic problems, everything just falls into place. Creating a second _Normandy _wouldn't be nearly as costly. Applying aspects of the design to other ships- well, you'd have to talk to appropriations, but I can imagine how you'd do it."

The admiral lapsed into silence for several minutes. Shepard asked, tentatively, "Was there anything further you wanted to investigate, sir?"

"No." He turned back towards her, relaxing slightly for the first time since he came aboard. "I'm still not convinced your _Normandy _wasn't an egregious waste of money, but I am convinced that you believe otherwise- and that you'll make full use of her capabilities."

"Thank you, sir."

"I need to file my report with the Joint Military Council. It will not be as… negative as I planned." He nodded to her. "Good hunting, Commander Shepard."

She saluted. "Pressly can show you out, sir."

As the two men departed, she caught Adams watching her. "What?"

"Nothing, ma'am." He straightened his expression. "It's just that it's like watching Ash have a go at you, but in reverse."

She glared at him crossly. "It's not the same situation at all."

"Of course not, ma'am," he replied without missing a beat. "You have much more experience at it."

Shepard rolled her eyes. "That'll do, Adams."

The hatch opened, admitting Alenko with Tali trailing behind him. "We saw the admiral leaving. How'd things wind up?"

She sighed. "Well, we get to keep the ship."

"That bad, huh?"

Tali glanced back towards the elevator. "He didn't seem to like us very much."

Shepard looked down at the banister separating the work area from the drive core, and rapped her knuckles against it, once, sick of arguing, sick of being worn out before the day was even half over. "I want a win. A big, old-fashioned, knock-their-socks off home run to show we do more than screw around out here."

Her eyes scanned the lot of them. "Any ideas?"

Engineer Adams glanced away. Alenko licked his lips and studied his boots. Tali fiddled with her suit's air intake tube.

Shepard sighed again. "That's what I thought."

/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\

They departed the Citadel, and almost immediately ran into another snag. As Pressly explained it, "There was a collision in the approach corridor to the mass relay. Evidently one of the pilots got confused about the departure order."

Shepard pinched the bridge of her nose. "You've got to be kidding me."

"No, ma'am. C-Sec's got a couple of tugboats on the way to clear out the wreckage, but it's going to be a few hours."

"Aren't collisions between spacecraft exceedingly rare?"

Pressly shrugged. "Space is big, but the approach corridor is not. And ships have to accelerate into alignment with the relay."

She ran a hand over her hair, smoothing back a few errant strands, and blew out a breath. "Alright. I guess there's no help for it. Let me know when we're ready."

He saluted. "Aye aye, ma'am."

Shepard took to the stairs and headed down to the lounge, datapad in hand, planning to catch up on email. Apparently she wasn't alone in that idea. Several of the crew were scattered around the area, some typing, some reading or watching vids. She plopped into a seat near Lieutenant Alenko, who was prodding his own datapad with a concerned frown, his eyebrows knit together.

"Something wrong?" she asked, pressing the icon to bring up her email.

He jumped. "No, ma'am. Just reviewing some data."

She could see several graphs in reverse displayed on the transparent holographic screen, but the writing was too small to make out many details. It looked like some kind of energy monitoring. "What sort of data?"

"Nothing much. Just a small project I'm working on with a… friend. Chorban is his name." He was trying to speak casually, but there was a nervousness in his voice that belied his tone.

She grinned at him over the top of her datapad. "You're a terrible liar, Alenko."

"I'm better with a hand of cards in front of me," he joked. "Really, it's not anything special. I agreed to help him collect some information. He's been slow getting back to me. Work's been kicking him in the teeth- some huge find that has everyone in his group jumping."

"Where does he work?"

"Exo-Geni, I think. One of those huge heartless corporations." He scrolled down a little further, still frowning at the charts with a touch of exasperation. "He's silent for weeks, and then suddenly dumps all this in my lap."

She raised an eyebrow. "Heartless is a pretty strong word for you."

Alenko didn't glance up from his work. "Nothing wrong with business, until they're handed responsibility that should be with the government."

"I'm not sure I follow."

"You've been in it since you were eighteen. You've got to know the Alliance loves contracting out work that's expensive, difficult, or time-consuming, especially when it doesn't fall under their usual tasks."

"And you've got a specific example." It wasn't a question. He only got that faint, bitter undertone when he was talking about his childhood on Jump Zero. Shepard was intensely curious but understood instinctively that pressing him for details would only shut him down.

Today, however, it appeared she was in luck. He set the datapad down in his lap. "You ever hear of a company called Conatix?"

"Not anything good. There were rumors they were arranging 'accidental' exposures to element zero out in the colonies. I don't know if they were true, but the scandal certainly killed the firm." She bit her lip. "Is that how you…"

"No." He shook his head. "My dad was stationed in Singapore when my mom was pregnant. There was a transport crash. It was the first time a large group of people were exposed all at once, so it was the first time they were able to track anything statistically. Most of the kids were fine. Some got brain tumors. And some started pulling snacks off the top of the fridge with their brains when they were about five years old."

Shepard laughed, not unkindly. "It figures it'd be food with you."

"Hey, there's a reason biotics get larger rations. The lightshow takes a lot of energy," he protested. "Anyway, it took my mom forever to figure out how I was doing it. Though I guess it would be more troubling if her first thoughts ran to 'my kindergartener is telekinetic'. Nobody knew about the potential back then. They took me to a bunch of doctors, none of whom had answers, and then my dad asked some psychiatrist he knew from work. That's when we found out about the others."

She pretended to scroll through a message, as if she were only casually interested in the conversation, not wanting to put him off. "So how does Conatix get mixed up in this?"

"How do things like that ever happen? People were afraid. Once they figured out the connection to eezo, realized the possibilities, the Systems Alliance passed the Element Zero Subject Identification Act, which essentially authorized the military to set up a program to study kids who had been exposed. Conatix was subcontracted to oversee the operation." He fidgeted with the datapad. "A bunch of guys in suits would show up at your house after school, and you'd be on Jump Zero by nightfall. They didn't give us much of a choice."

"Holy hell." Shepard was taken aback. He'd hinted at it before, but somehow her mind managed to smooth over the implications. "How old were you?"

"I was nine." He was quiet a long moment. "It wasn't all bad. We had serious problems- when we started trying to use biotics for non-trivial exercises, kids ended up breaking their own limbs. The training they put together and the implants they developed put a stop to that. And we weren't alone. That helped."

Shepard couldn't see how it helped much at all. "But they kept you away from your families, on a research station at the edge of the solar system. You told me it was like being in a zoo."

"I don't want to make it sound like… look, it is what it is." Alenko looked up at the ceiling a long moment, leaning back in the couch. "You're right about families. We figured out they were editing the messages we gave them to send home the second year- nothing that smacked of unhappiness or criticism was allowed out. There wasn't much point in trying after that. But we weren't hungry or homeless, and we had the kind of education money can't buy, specifically designed for us. Plenty of kids grow up with worse."

"I don't understand how none of this got out." At this point, she'd abandoned all pretense of not being invested. "The conducted _experimental brain surgery _on children, for god's sake- there's no way the public would have stood for it."

"Like I said, people were scared," he answered patiently. "Biotics are like… magic. People don't understand it and they don't like it. And they're right- if you lose control, maybe a guy gets his jaw broken. If I lose control…"

He trailed off, then cleared his throat and continued in a somewhat more normal voice. "And besides, the Alliance classified most of it after the program was shut down. Covering their mistakes."

She stared at him, having no idea what was appropriate to say or do next. Crack a joke? Hug him? Act like nothing was said? "Kaidan, I'm so sorry."

"God, please don't do that." He forced out a chuckle, looking pained. "This is why I don't tell people. Because they all start looking at you like that."

"What the hell makes you think I have no experience in being looked at like that?" she demanded. "I can't show my face in public without someone reminding me I watched fifty marines get killed by monsters in the dead of night. There's no harm in admitting some things are exactly as bad as they are."

"I dealt with this a long time ago, same as you," he replied in measured tones.

Shepard snorted, amused, and gave him a lopsided smile. "If that's so, then you must be pretty screwed up."

He laughed despite himself. "You're insane."

"My point exactly." She turned back to her email, switching back to the original topic. "So things slowed down at work with your friend, I take it?"

"Yeah. The outpost that was feeding them data shut down suddenly, he says. Freed up a lot of his time." He picked up the pad again, his eyes flicking over the message to where he left off.

"Mmm-hmm." She was working through her own backlog of messages. Characterizing Kahoku as angry was an understatement. She'd sent him a summary of their findings on Edolus and images of the transmitter cover. He hadn't recognized it either, but now he was vowing to take it to the Shadow Broker. It was enough to make her wonder if the old admiral had finally snapped; his obsession with one lost mission was unhealthy. It was sad truth of military life in a dangerous galaxy that sometimes soldiers die.

The next message was from Admiral Hackett. That was a first. He commanded the whole of the Fifth Fleet and by seniority was third in command of the entire Systems Alliance Navy. Even spectres didn't make his radar under most circumstances. So it was with a mix of curiosity and trepidation that she opened the email.

The content made her cringe. Apparently, Alliance command was significantly less amused by her purposeful tongue-slip regarding Saren's identity yesterday morning. Her indiscretion earned her a severe reprimand reminding her in no uncertain terms of the definition of need-to-know and that her orders came from her superiors, not her own whims.

_To hell with all of them_, she thought, uncharitably. She was doing her best. Revoking Saren's spectre status would remove his unfettered access to Council space, but it did nothing for warning colonies that he was dangerous. She meant what she told Garrus. People deserved the right to protect themselves, and the Alliance truly wasn't large enough to do it for them, not completely.

Across from her, Alenko was grousing under his breath. "Twenty gigabytes of data out of nowhere and he expects me to look at it right away. Just because he's not busy until Feros comes back online doesn't mean I don't have other things to do. This was a bad idea."

He tapped away at the pad irritably. Shepard glanced up, with a kind of prickling in her gut. "What was that?"

He turned red. "Sorry ma'am. I kind of got shanghaied into helping him the first time we were on the Citadel. He has his damned VI do all the processing and- I don't know what I was thinking volunteering."

"No, not that." She was almost afraid to ask directly, as if deliberate inspection would collapse her inkling of intuition. "What is Feros?"

"Exo-Geni is a strange company. They subsidize new colonies for people who want to move out to the frontier, but can't afford it." He looked faintly disgusted. "It's kind of exploitative, honestly. Usually the planets they select don't have much going for them except loads of Prothean ruins that the colonists mine for tech- all of which is owned by Exo-Geni, of course."

Shepard licked her lips. Slowly, she said, "So. If I have this right- an entire Traverse colony smack in the middle of an old Prothean world went offline not more than a few days ago?"

Alenko stared at her a long moment, and then said a word that was very unlike him and until that instant Shepard could not have sworn was part of his vocabulary. "And here I am so concerned with this damned useless data that I couldn't even see it."

"Wait- how the hell did Alliance Command not know about this? This is exactly the kind of intel they would have sent us straight away."

He shook his head. "They may not know. It's a company world. Private colonies are sometimes kept pretty close to the chest. They don't ask for help until it's far too late."

She got to her feet and her hand went to her mouth, trying to swallow her sudden excitement, remind herself that it might not mean anything. But it was the first break of any kind they'd had since finding Liara.

He stood at the same time as her. Their eyes met, both elated by the good news, and unexpectedly Shepard threw her arms around him, a hug so quick and tight she was letting go almost as soon as it started. Alenko was bewildered. "Ma'am?"

"Come on," she said, grinning broadly as she headed for the stairs. "We're going to Feros."

"Are we walking there, ma'am?"

Shepard called over her shoulder without breaking her stride. "No- I need you to tell me where it is!"


	22. Chapter 22

Commander Shepard hung her thumbs in her pockets and leaned back from the holographic data display with a sigh. "We can't say we weren't expecting this."

Pressly reached into the interface and dragged out a keyhole image of ExoGeni's colony, fruit of the _Normandy's _efforts the last two hours taking surveillance from orbit around Feros. The galaxy map lay flat on the island in the CIC to make room for their planning. "They're blocking all communications, the same as on Eden Prime, but from what we've seen the bulk of the geth are concentrated here and here."

He circled two regions. Shepard leaned forward, frowning. "That's ExoGeni HQ, snuggled up next to the heart of the colony. What's the other location?"

"It's a small outpost called Zhu's Hope. The colonists assigned there handle logistics for the rest of Feros. Evidently, they're not self-sufficient. The shipping logs Tali and Garrus pulled show a lot of off-world deliveries."

"And they all come through Zhu's Hope."

"Yes ma'am."

"Explains why Saren's hitting them so hard. Keep the spaceport bottled up and nobody else can escape to sound an alarm." Shepard glanced to her left. "Bakari, any sign of Saren's flagship?"

"No, ma'am." His fingers flew across his terminal and another image appeared on the display. "We have spotted a smaller vessel bearing some crude similarities."

Shepard studied the ship, clinging to the side of ExoGeni HQ like the insect it resembled. It was smaller, sleeker somehow, and painted a silvery gray rather than black. Her mouth thinned into a hard line. "The jamming signal came from Saren's ship. A force of this size represents a major commitment to this front. He's here somewhere, I know it. I can feel it."

First Eden Prime, with its thousands of casualties. Then Therum and its miners, desperate people on the edge of space just scraping out a living. Now Feros- if there was ever a spot where people were holding onto the last of their hope with both hands, this was it. Saren was willing to tear all that apart in search of one bauble of a prior age.

Her eyes pierced the footage as though she could peel back the obstructions by sheer force of will. _Where are you hiding, you slimy son of a bitch?_

Pressly zoomed out, showing a good chunk of the surface of the planet. "Ma'am, Feros was some kind of Prothean city-world. It's covered in ruins. The flagship is large, but there's still plenty of cover. Taking pictures from orbit severely limits perspective."

Joker came on the comm. "Commander, I'm getting uncomfy leaving our ass hanging out here like this. IES is going down in fifteen. We have to vent or we'll cook everyone on the ship."

"Right." She surveyed the intel one final time and made her decision. "Prepare for landing at Zhu's Hope. We're going in."

"Aye aye ma'am." Joker sounded excited.

Pressly gave her a glance. "The stealth system can't cloak reentry. We're going to light up the sky like a small asteroid."

"I know. But we can't handle this with a mako drop. The entire colony is under assault." She dismissed the data feeds, brought the map back up to its usual position, and returned her X.O.'s concern with a level stare. "I don't know what we're barging into, but I need to find out. I'm leaving the _Normandy _in your hands. Keep her running until we know how hot it's going to get."

"Should I have a relay jump destination ready, ma'am?"

"Yes. Don't tell me where it is." She met his eyes, expression sober. "We don't know where Saren's real ship is hiding. He's not an idiot so he has to know we're following him. This could be a trap. Do you understand what I'm saying?"

Pressly, a career man, wasn't new to hard decisions. He saluted. "Aye aye, ma'am. On your order and not before."

"I'll radio you when we're inside. If the shit starts flying or you don't hear from me within an hour, use that jump."

"Understood, ma'am."

"Good. Tell Adams to start the core discharge as soon as we meet the ground and be ready to run." She pushed away from the map and headed towards the stairs. "I'm going to suit up. The deck is yours."

_Normandy's _marines were already waiting on the lower deck when Shepard arrived. She gave them a curt nod. "Gear up. We're going in on foot."

There were salutes all around as people started pulling armor off the racks. She wasn't surprised to see Garrus and Wrex suiting up with the others- they were going stir crazy trapped on the ship the last few weeks. Shepard retrieved her own gear and slid it on, testing the shoulder of her hard suit with a touch of concern. It was a good repair from the damage of Therum, but she hadn't gotten a real chance to test it in combat conditions.

Joker's voice crackled through the bay. "ETA 10 minutes."

"Right." Shepard stopped fidgeting with the armor webbing and snagged a datapad. Everyone crowded around it as she showed them the plan. "We're going to set down in one of Zhu's Hope's docking bays, nice and regular. From what we can tell the colony's been under full assault for the better part of a week."

Alenko frowned at the map. "They've got to have some kind of security force to hold out that long."

"Don't know. Not Alliance at any rate." Shepard pointed. "There should be a tunnel leading from the dock to the habitats here. We may encounter some resistance. The goal is to get to the colonists as quickly and quietly as we can."

She looked around at the assembled marines. "Pressly and the rest of the crew will hang back with the ship until we know what's going on. Short-range communications should remain functional. First priority when we arrive is to secure the spaceport against further attacks. Any questions?"

There was a chorus of "no ma'ams" and she smiled. They looked determined, and more than ready to see a little action. "Then let's go kick some silicon ass."

They assembled in the airlock and started the decontamination protocol as Joker settled the ship into place. He came on the comm as the outer hatch slid open. "Good hunting, Commander."

"You better not scratch my ship while I'm gone."

He feigned offense. "Me?!"

She snorted a laugh. "Shepard out."

The air of levity didn't last long as they moved into the spaceport. The docks were abandoned. It was eerie- crates of goods, some clearly marked as food, were simply abandoned in place, and the yawning maws of the empty docking bays gaped from shadows. They spread out a bit, moving forward cautiously, scouting the empty halls.

After a few minutes of walking, Corporal Greico came over the comm link. "Commander, I think you need to see this."

She made her way to his location. He was accompanied by Private Chase and a rusty smear on the ground that immediately dropped her spirits. "You found one of the dock workers?"

Chase turned towards her, but she was unexpectedly smiling. "Commander- he's still alive!"

Indeed, Greico was kneeling beside a crate with his omni-tool activated. Shepard moved around the cargo and saw a man in overalls propped against a wall, ashen-faced, his hand clenched to his stomach. Sweat beaded his dark skin. It was clear that he'd only survived because it took so damn long for a stomach wound to kill a man.

She called for a general halt over the comm and squatted next to Greico. The injured man rolled his head towards her, eyes blank.

Greico glanced her way. "I gave him some medigel and painkillers, but he's pretty out of it, ma'am."

"What's your name?" she asked gently.

"D- David." He coughed a bit, wincing with every breath. "David al Talaqani."

"Can you tell me what happened here, David?"

He swallowed, nodded, tried to speak but only managed to cough some more. Shepard glanced at Greico's diagnostic. David was in bad shape, but stable. "In your own time. No rush."

He took a rasping breath. "They came up through the old tunnels. Machines. They took the dock first, made off with our shuttles." More coughing. "They killed most everyone I expect. Left me for dead here."

Shepard brought up her personal ladar, hating herself for checking, but well aware this man could be bait for an ambush, to get them to open their doors while their backs were turned. Nothing registered. She decided to err on the side of mercy. "We have a medical facility aboard our ship. I can take you back there."

He nodded, and accepted Greico's help getting to his feet. "Did- is the colony-"

"Under attack, but as far as we can tell, still there," Shepard supplied, guessing at his question. "I'm sorry, we won't have more information until we make it to the habs."

He nodded. Her attention snapped to the two marines. "Take him to Chakwas, then get back."

"Aye aye, ma'am."

She watched them hobble off for a long moment, before returning to the remainder of the squad to continue pressing forward.

The colonists made use of the Prothean ruins wherever they could. Shepard recognized some similarities from Therum in the architecture. Liara told her while they were in transit that sites like Feros weren't tremendously uncommon, or of particular value to archaeologists. These planets were gutted, with little working technology or even cultural objects of interest, like furniture or decorations. Companies like ExoGeni were betting stacks of credits that with enough time and cheap labor they could ferret out something of value from the near-barren remains.

Large swaths of the ancient city would be uninhabitable by the asari's estimate. Time and weather took their toll. Even Prothean construction didn't last forever. Shepard wondered, uncomfortably, if Earth's structures would fare so well after fifty millennia of disuse. The concrete, or whatever the Protheans used, was riddled with pits and cracks. In places along the walls it sloughed off in sheets, leaving behind uneven piles of chunky gravel. Moss clung to the corners where water trickled down throw millennial cracks in the massive structure.

There was a tangled mess of tunnels, hallways, and stairs leading out from the ship landing ground. Shepard was certain that with twice as many marines and a month to work with she couldn't scout them all. They made her uneasy. The passageway was dark, the flickering emergency lights marking the path to Zhu's Hope providing scant illumination. Every entrance leading into the depths of the ruins they left behind made her more uneasy. There were just too many places for geth to hide. The ladar was all but useless with so many walls surrounding them to block the signal.

She strained her ears instead, allowing the electronics buried in her arm and ear to boost even the smallest sounds into audible range. The omni-tool cast the shadowed tunnel in an orange glow like a witchlight. _Marine, spectre, sorceress. That's me._

Artificially enhanced, even the footsteps of her companions were almost unbearably loud as they pressed forward in relative silence. She filtered them out. It left a softer but similar sound, coming from up ahead, metal falling against concrete at regular intervals. Synthetic footsteps.

She dismissed the augmentation, returning her to a world of ordinary sound, and signaled her findings. They moved into what cover they could find and continued on, weapons readied. Shepard peered around a corner.

Three geth clustered together, motionless now. Shepard figured they were waiting for something. They were alien to observe- no shuffling, fidgeting, or sighing as they waited, not all like human troops, absolutely still. She held her breath and eased forward.

Apparently, her very human functions, the breath in her lungs, the creaking joints of her suit, were as loud to geth instrumentation. Those slender heads whipped around like lighthouse beacons, half-blinding her. Shepard didn't stop to think. "Hostile units! Fire!"

Gunfire rang out immediately in the hall as the crew of the _Normandy _took on the geth, and the machines answered in kind. They weren't foolish; sensing odds not in their favor, the synthetics fled along the barely-lit pathway, firing behind them to deter followers. It forced the marine squad to stick to cover as they pursued their targets.

There was no pretense of quiet now. Boots thudded against the floor, bullets ricocheted from the walls, and the geth's own strange electronic grunts mingled with human cries to fill the hallway with sound. It echoed like a cavern.

Either the noise or a silent transmission drew enemy reinforcements to their location. Six additional units, including two of the stealth models, poured from side passageways. They kept up the pressure, keeping the geth in retreat- until they rounded a corner and were met with a sudden barrage of gunfire pointed directly at them.

As they emerged into the final passageway, they found the geth pinned by colonial defenders, grim-faced men and women hiding behind makeshift cover made of crates and repurposed hab partitions. They weren't particularly good shots. The marines found themsleves confronting a good deal of friendly fire.

The squad scattered, taking cover as best they could against the colonists and the geth, who by now were berserk in their desperation to survive. Shepard crouched against the wall and took aim. "Don't hit the colonists!"

Caught between marines and the surprise attack from the front, the geth didn't stand a chance. However, the colonists, spooked, continued to shoot into the tunnel after the final synthetic fell.

"Cease fire!" Shepard tucked her head to her chest as a stray shot rained bits of brick down on her head from the wall.

She sucked in a breath and bellowed down the hall. "We're Alliance! This is Commander Shepard! Hold your fire! We're here to help you!"

There was sudden silence as they got themselves under control at last. Someone called out from behind the barricade. "Come out with your hands up!"

Shepard gave her squad a quelling look and stood, slowly, leaving her rifle on the ground. As she stepped into view, her Alliance-issued gear and insignia plain, the ten-odd weapons pointed at her relaxed a hair. The speaker motioned her forward without lowering his pistol.

Shepard stood at ease as they scanned her. "Happy?"

"I'm sorry," he said, laying down his gun. Once he let down his guard, his total exhaustion was evident. Dark circles decorated his eyes and his clothes looked like they hadn't seen changing in days. "I'm Davin Reynolds. These people are all residents of Zhu's Hope. We haven't had much trust to spare lately."

"I understand. My squad?" She raised an eyebrow.

He nodded. "They can come out."

Shepard turned and called over her shoulder. "Move up! We've got friendlies."

The man watched them approach, the disappointment on his face mirrored across the other defenders. "I'd hoped there were more of you."

"We're just one frigate," she replied briskly, trying not to sound apologetic. The Alliance didn't advise people to sign up with these kinds of risky ventures. And while Shepard did report her findings to the Fifth Fleet, if she had to guess ExoGeni would block any rescue effort to protect their own interests.

That didn't make what was happening to the people caught in the crossfire right or fair. Shepard gave a version of the truth. "We've been tracking the geth since Eden Prime. I'm sure you know they're jamming communications from this planet."

Davin's face fell. "So you're not actually here to help us."

She looked around the scene, taking in their tired, defeated faces, the coating of grime overlaying their clothes and the makeshift barricades, the bargain bin weaponry two generations out of date. Then she looked back at her squad of marines, at turns determined, disgusted, and angry as hell as they took in what the geth had done to this colony.

Shepard rubbed her face. Saren was out there, waiting for her. This was a diversion. It had to be.

"_I do solemnly swear to support and defend the territories of the Systems Alliance against all threats, within and without, under the orders of Parliament and such superiors as they care to appoint, in all circumstances such as they may come, so help me God."_

_Fuck._

Her gaze shifted back to Davin. "We'll do everything we can, but honestly the quickest way to get these flashlights the hell out of your colony might be to help me find what I'm seeking. As soon as I have that, they'll lose interest."

"Right." His voice took on a more businesslike tone. "You'll need to talk to Fai Dan."

A short woman with curly blonde hair cut close to her head, and a more professional grip on her rifle than most, sauntered over, popping the back off the gun to vent the heat sink faster. "Davin, that was a recon team. The real thing'll be here any minute."

Shepard rapidly assessed the situation. "How many?"

The woman grimaced. "Could be as few as ten, could be as many as thirty."

"Thirty?" Shepard was taken aback. Alenko was right- it was nothing short of miraculous they'd held out this long, rag-tag as they seemed. They must be made of sterner stuff than met the eye.

The blonde nodded grimly in confirmation. Shepard blew out a breath. "Alright. I'm going to see this Fai Dan. Lieutenant!"

Alenko was checking the grip on his pistol. "Ma'am?"

"Hold this barricade. I don't want a single one of those robotic bastards setting foot beyond this tunnel while I'm gone. Understood?"

He saluted and answered with the kind of grim satisfaction she'd expect from Williams. "Yes, ma'am."

Maybe she'd underestimated just how furious the crew was becoming with the geth, after Eden Prime, Therum, and now this. Well, this would be a productive way of working it out, if nothing else. No small part of her wished she could join them instead of seeing to the planning.

As Alenko started ordering the marines to defensive positions, she nodded to Davin. "Lead on."

"Greta," he called, and the blonde woman joined them as they headed back into the colony itself.

As they walked past the habs, Shepard realized what the surveillance images hadn't revealed. This wasn't a modular colony. This was the wreck of a modular ship, a basic freighter if she knew anything about ships at all. It shouldn't have been on the ground. That model was spaceworthy only.

It was strange enough to raise questions. "Is there where you live? In this ship?"

Greta almost laughed. "No- Commander, was it? We got stranded here when the geth landed. We converted the ship to a temporary defensive fallback. Before that, we were using it as… well, a break room of sorts."

"You've got a decent number of people here."

"Mmm. Well, it was the middle of the day and most of us work at the spaceport. It's the only real activity here aside from the research. That's at the other end of the colony. We've been cut off since the attack. God knows if they're even still alive out there."

She filed that away for later use. "Fai Dan is your leader?"

Davin nodded. "You could say that. He's guided us through the worst of this so far."

Behind the bulk of the ship, a middle-aged man with Asiatic features was engaged in a heated debate with a young woman clad in armor bearing the ExoGeni logo. They paused their conversation as the trio approached. The woman spoke first. "Who the hell is this?"

"Arcelia," the man chided. He glanced at Shepard, speculatively, and held out his hand. "I am Fai Dan, the leader of this humble outpost."

She shook it. "Lieutenant Commander Shepard, Fifth Fleet, Systems Alliance Navy. My ship, the _Normandy_, just landed in your spaceport. What exactly is going on here?"

"Have you got _eyes _in that overstuffed head of yours, _Lieutenant Commander_?" the woman, Arcelia, asked with elaborate sarcasm.

Shepard regarded her coolly. "I was hoping for more detail than 'we're being invaded by geth'."

Fai Dan sighed. "You'll have to excuse Agent Martinez. The past week has been quite… trying, for all of us."

"I didn't sign up for this," Martinez muttered under her breath. She looked scared.

The commander returned to the topic at hand. "Greta said you've seen parties as large as thirty geth."

"Not all geth," Fai Dan corrected. "Mostly machines, yes, but also some krogan. The last killed three of us before we managed to subdue him."

The krogan from Therum flashed through her mind, the one leading the geth sortie who seemed less than coordinated at their final battle. _It can't be coincidence. What is Saren doing with krogan?_

Aloud, she said, "What about turians or asari?"

He blinked. "No, nothing like that. Why do you ask?"

"I have reason to believe a turian named Saren Arterius is leading the geth attacks on our colonies." She saw no reason to keep the information private. "It's believed that an asari matriarch, Benezia, may be traveling in his company. Do either of those names ring a bell?"

The four colonists exchanged glances that went on a little longer than was expected. Shepard's brow furrowed. However, before she could remark on it, Fai Dan answered. "No, Commander. Just the krogan and the machines, as we said."

He was calm- almost too calm given the situation. Her eyes slid from person to person. Carefully, sidestepping the incongruity for the moment, she moved on to her next question. "He's seeking out Prothean sites specifically. We think he may be looking for particular kinds of Prothean technology. Do you have any idea what he might want here?"

Fai Dan shook his head. "No, Commander, none."

"You didn't find anything lately? No big discoveries for ExoGeni?" she pressed.

"That would be proprietary."

"I don't have any interest in your trade se-" At that moment, the comm crackled in her ear. She turned away slightly and pressed her finger against it. "Shepard. What?"

Alenko's voice cut across the static. "We've got a problem here, Commander."

She heard something that sounded like shots ricocheting off a shield, followed by some light cursing. "What was that?"

"They moved up a few floors in the structure when they realized they couldn't take us from the front." His voice sounded strained. "I've got a barrier up but I'm not sure how long-"

More shots, muted, interrupted the transmission. Williams came on the line. "The L.T.'s kinda got his hands full here, ma'am. Short of it- if we pull out under cover, they'll storm us from the front, and if the barrier goes down they'll shoot the tops off our heads."

"I'm on it. Hold position. Shepard out." She looked up at Fai Dan. "We're going to have to continue this later."

"Go," he said, without hesitation.

She ran back to the barricade. Most of the squad, marines and colonists alike, remained crouched behind their crates. Alenko stood in the middle, one hand stretched above him, wearing a look of intense concentration. A translucent hemisphere of bluish-purple arced over the group. Three stories up, a geth unit leaned over the balcony and took another potshot. Every muscle in his body tensed as the bullet struck the barrier, but for now, it continued to hold.

Williams scuttled over, not breaking cover. "He says the real problem is if they get smart enough to start dropping grenades."

"That's a happy thought." Shepard reached forward and tapped Garrus' shoulder. "Vakarian."

He twisted, looking at her over his shoulder. "Tight spot, right Shepard?"

"Can you actually use that sniper rifle of yours, or is it just for show?"

"Oh, I can do better than use it." His mandibles flared out, a turian grin. "You have an idea?"

"You're with me. Williams, stay with the L.T. Keep everyone in cover." She clapped the chief on the back and retreated towards the ship-turned-hab.

They went around the corner, out of the sight of the snipers, and Shepard started searching for a way to the roof. Garrus understood her intention immediately. "Give me a boost and I can haul you up after."

"Stay low." She cupped her hands, making a cradle for his boot, and threw him up towards the top of the module. It was just enough help for the turian to grab onto a flange and drag himself the rest of the way. He reached down a hand, lying on his stomach, and helped her scale the wall.

The top of the ship was scattered with makeshift repairs to render the fallen behemoth surface-habitable, from hvac tubes to power generators- plenty of places to provide some limited cover as they belly crawled towards the front edge. The height of the module improved their angle just enough to give them a shot at the geth they couldn't clear from the ground.

Shepard curled up behind an air conditioning unit while Garrus took up similar station across from her. She didn't mince any words. "You know the drill. You see a shot, you take it."

The sniper rifle unfolded smoothly in her hands. It was a weapon requiring an entirely different skill set from the others in her arsenal. This was a watchmaker's paradise. Making precision shots at long range required trigonometry, planning, assessment of conditions which would alter the path of the bullet, like wind and gravity. These days the scope did a lot of the calculation on its own. Some tripods would even adjust the aim of the gun automatically, but Shepard wasn't packing one of those.

She sighted along the barrel, finding her target, and followed the adjustments advised by her scope as it tasted the local environment. The geth vanished from her sights, but not from the trajectory of her shot. Her eye moved away and waited for the right moment.

As the synthetic leaned forward, its own rifle sliding into place, she squeezed the trigger.

The shot didn't miss. A milky white spray filled her sights and the geth unit fell back from the balcony at some speed. Garrus also found his target, to the left of hers. Calmly, though not without the slightest hint of an exchanged smile, they hunkered down and waited for the weapons to cool.

They repeated the exercise three times before the geth gave up. Sliding lightly from the roof- getting down was considerably easier than getting up- the pair returned to the barricade. Once it was clear the geth weren't going to attempt the tactic a fifth time, Alenko let the barrier fall and he was now slumped against a crate, massaging his forehead. Shepard guessed his little pills had also made an appearance. He tossed her a weak salute.

"Chief, take Draven and Greico and scout ahead a bit. Make sure they're not coming back." She watched them saunter off before turning her attention to her lieutenant. "You okay?"

He peered up at her. His voice seemed to come from a long way off. "Nothing a giant greasy hamburger and about three days' of sleep won't fix."

She chuckled and shook her head. "Fresh out of greasy burgers."

"That's a shame." Alenko leaned his head back against the crate and closed his eyes.

Williams got her attention over the comm. "It looks clear, ma'am. Nothing but scrap up here."

"Roger that. Come back home." Shepard was lowering her hand from her ear when Fai Dan and his coterie reappeared.

He surveyed the scene. "Impressive work. Thank you, Commander."

Martinez looked queasy. "Was that… biotics?"

She said it like a dirty word. Shepard watched Alenko open one eye, warily, and she took a step towards Martinez. "Those biotics just saved the lives of these defenders, so whatever your problem is, I suggest you get over it."

The rent-a-cop from ExoGeni continued her criticism. "What kind of Alliance ship travels with aliens aboard, anyway?"

Garrus flicked his rifle back into locked position and holstered it on his back. "Shepard's not just an Alliance officer. She's also a spectre. Different circumstances."

"Wow, you must really think we're hicks." Martinez's derisive laughter had a nasty edge. "There aren't any human spectres."

"No, wait a moment, Arcelia," Greta interrupted before the woman could begin a tirade. "I think it was on one of Darcy's shows, that junk she watches from the Citadel. She's telling the truth."

"Darcy is…?" Shepard asked.

"Our daughter." Greta rolled her eyes, exasperated, looking over at Davin. "If she's not complaining about moving here instead of the Citadel- as if it were at all the same- she's going on about that damned boy from HQ. Teenagers."

"I take it you're not happy about her seeing someone from corporate?"

"He's 22, she's 16," Davin said shortly. "Being a researcher from corporate is just the start of things that don't make me happy."

Fai Dan was coming to the end of a thought. "I've thought about what you asked."

Shepard was keen immediately. "You know what Saren wants?"

He grimaced almost as if in pain, and chose his words carefully. "No. But your… best chance of driving out the geth is to get to headquarters. Unfortunately…"

Shepard could see where this was going. "You've been cut off from communication since this started."

Martinez took up the thread. "Yes, but it's worse. There's no direct path that I know of from here to HQ or the residential area of the colony."

"What?" She was momentarily baffled. "How did you get back and forth?"

"We used the shuttles." Martinez's frustration was clear. "This was a spaceport back in the Prothean days. Over there was housing. ExoGeni made use of both spaces already here to save money."

Shepard groaned. "And the geth commandeered all the shuttles. Right."

"How do you know that?" There was a hush of excitement in Fai Dan's tone.

She dusted off her hands, already thinking ahead to her next move. "We found David on the dock. He ate a bullet in the gut, but we took him back to the _Normandy's _med bay for treatment."

"That is joyful news. We hadn't thought there were any survivors."

"Speaking of which, I need to check in with my ship. If you'll excuse me." Shepard took a few steps away from the group, back towards the tunnels, and tried to raise Pressly on her comm. "Shepard to _Normandy_, do you read?"

There was a burst of static. Whatever jamming technology the geth employed, it was wreaking havoc even with ground communications. Words were getting through, but it sounded like early radio from a historical drama vid. Pressly's voice wavered. "Commander. We're standing by, all conditions nominal."

"Good to hear it. We've had some trouble here, but it's clear for the moment." She paused, chewing it over, but she couldn't see any way around it. "I want to decamp a few of the remaining crew to Zhu's Hope, and we need to retrieve some of the supplies sitting on the dock. These people are in a bad way."

"Sounds good," he answered, the brief message popping with interference. "What do you have in mind, ma'am?"

Shepard made certain to speak loudly and clearly. "We just sent a pack of geth running. We should have a window of relative safety. I'm sending a team back."

"Aye aye, ma'am, read and understood. We'll await your team."

"Shepard out." She cut the transmission.

It took a little time, but by splitting her marines she was able to keep defenses running at Zhu's Hope while ferrying back personnel and crates of food. For some of the colonists, it was the first break they'd had from the barricades since the invasion. Liara and Tali joined them along with Serviceman Bakari from communications. She wanted to see if anything could be done about the interference and directed him to begin running experiments with Lowe back on the ship. David al Talaqani was ecstatic to hear the colonists had survived, but Chakwas was not comfortable letting her patient leave as yet, so he remained aboard.

The Alliance milled about the camp, mixing with the colonists, who were almost universally filthy and exhausted from their unceasing vigil. Shepard caught more than one of them seemingly staring at walls. They didn't talk much, even amongst themselves. Those kept away from the barricades worked quietly at solitary tasks. "Something's not right here."

Liara thought she saw the answer. "They've been severely traumatized by the invasion."

Alenko had recovered enough to walk around, though his shoulders still drooped. Someone had gotten him a ration of what looked like dried meat. "I've seen trauma before. I agree with the Commander, something's off here."

He took a bite. Shepard jerked her chin towards the food. "What is that, anyway?"

"Dunno. Never had it before." He regarded the strip. "It's not half bad though. Davin said he started making it the last time their stores ran low. ExoGeni doesn't put a priority on timely deliveries."

"It's not an easy life out here."

Liara wrapped her arms around herself. "You can say that again. Who wants to live in a shipwreck?"

That inconsistency was niggling away at her mind as well. "Why is there even a wreck here? Why wasn't it cleaned up?"

"Maybe it happened early in the attack?" Alenko suggested.

She shook her head. "No, it looks like it's been here longer."

"I believe I can answer that." A salarian approached them, blinking in the light, his clothing somewhat better kept than the colonists'. "The ship you're looking at is the _Borealis_. I chartered her to bring my stock to this world."

"You're a merchant."

He bowed, acknowledging the truth of her statement. "I am Inoste Ledra. When my ship suffered a malfunction upon arrival, we decided to repurpose the remains as shelter for the spaceport workers. The sun can become quite hot during the day. It's all the ancient pavement, see."

Shepard raised her eyebrows. "You didn't want to go home?"

"Why?" he asked honestly. "Zhu's Hope is a peaceful place. In time, I came to see the virtues of the colonists simple way of life, and the hope this colony represents."

Alenko took a glance around the warzone. "Peaceful."

"Until recently."

"I see." Shepard pursed her lips. The salarian's expression reflected nothing but unvarnished truth, but the story failed to feel authentic to her. A merchant, a _salarian_, just give up interplanetary trade in one of the most dangerous corridors of Council space for a "simple life" in a shithole like Feros? She wasn't buying it. But the slender green-tan alien seemed to believe himself completely.

His inner lids flicked over quiet black eyes. He was nearly as still as the geth, waiting. It was unnerving. Shepard folded her arms, pushing the growing creepiness from her mind. "Where's ExoGeni's security? Surely they have more support than Martinez."

"Many of them were at the docking bays. They died early in the attack." Another blink.

"Didn't you call for backup?"

"You need to speak to Fai Dan about that."

Shepard's brow furrowed. "So the shuttles got knocked out early at HQ, too? Saren hit both places at once?"

"As I said, you should speak with Fai Dan." The salarian glanced around, almost furtively. "Excuse me."

He walked about twenty feet away and took up an idle position near the entrance to his wrecked ship. It wasn't precisely a guard stance- more like idling. Shepard exchanged a baffled look with Liara and Alenko. None of them knew what to make of it.

"Maybe you're right," Liara admitted. "Maybe there is something odd about this place."


	23. Chapter 23

Liara T'Soni exited the hab, stretching, and took in a deep lungful of scorched air. The skies over Feros were resolutely gray, as they had remained for the past week, while the _Normandy _crew worked alongside the colonists to repel the geth incursions and find a way across the ruins to ExoGeni headquarters and the bulk of the colony. She wished it would rain and settle some of the blasted heat. But this world was next to barren, a tangled heap of aging stone, concrete, and more exotic building materials, and the long stretches of unnatural terrain created by the city-world wreaked havoc on Feros' climate. Rain was unknown at this latitude.

Garrus caught her eye as she wiped some of the sweat from her neck, his rifle balanced across his knees. He'd scarcely left the barricades since _Normandy's _arrival. "Shepard's still at it?"

The asari shook her head, head still spinning from hours in Shepard's ad hoc command center. Pulling in terminals from the hab, Shepard established data feeds linking back to her ship and now spent much of her time pouring over their scant collection of information. "This planet is like a maze. So far, nobody's found a clear path. Some of the younger analysts are beginning to jump every time she so much as moves."

Garrus chuckled. Despite the harsh conditions, or perhaps because of them, he seemed in his element. "Shepard's not an easy person to disappoint, even if you're doing your best."

"She has very high standards."

"That she does." Garrus paused, looking back down the tunnel that led out of the spaceport. "It might be time for some new ideas."

Liara was intrigued despite herself. "Like what?"

"I know we want to do this with a minimum of civilian casualties, but if we could just take out the anti-aircraft artillery Saren's set up around HQ, we wouldn't have to bother with maps and scans."

She rotated her neck, tiredly, rubbing muscles sore from hours of scanning data. "We reviewed that plan. There's no way to do it without taking out swaths of the colony in the process."

"All the colonists are likely dead already."

"We don't know that," she said patiently.

"That doesn't mean we shouldn't-" He cut himself off as he caught site of an approaching figure, a young human woman dressed in the brown coveralls typical of Zhu's Hope. "Aw, dammit."

"What?" Liara asked, turning. She managed to school her expression just in time.

The girl, Darcy Reynolds, was pretty and more than aware of it, with her father's dark hair and flashing eyes, and her mother's delicate features. She was clutching a datapad breathlessly, and stopped just short of the hatch Liara was blocking with her body. "Can I go inside?"

"The Commander's busy right now," Garrus supplied quickly.

She drew herself up. "But I have some data for her from Mr. Blake."

The turian held out a hand. "Give it here. I'll take a look."

With great reluctance, she turned over the datapad. Garrus began to peruse it, entirely ignoring the girl as he worked. Darcy didn't seem bothered. She tucked her hands behind her back and craned her neck to watch him.

After a few moments, to clear the awkwardness as much as anything else, Liara said, "It's unusual to find someone of your age working in a spaceport."

Darcy wrinkled her nose. "My dad says anyone old enough to hold a hammer's old enough to work. Life out here requires everyone to do their fair share."

"You don't agree with your father?"

She looked up towards the sky, wistfully. "My parents wanted to move here, not me. I remember what it was like before mom lost her job. We were going to move to the Citadel, you know. It must be so exotic there, all the vids make it look like that."

"The vids don't show the ugly parts. It's very crowded, and it's got its share of unsavory places."

If anything, that notion seemed only to encourage her. She drifted a step closer, her dark eyes wide. "You've been there? Tell me, please."

There was more than a little whine to the request. Liara shifted uncomfortably. "Only a few times, truly. The Commander had to escort me to a debriefing after I was rescued from Therum. I'm an archaeologist. I spend most of my time in places not much different than this."

Darcy's disappointment over her lack of experience with the Citadel was short-lived as she latched onto another statement of curiosity. "You were rescued? Were there space pirates? I've watched so many vids about it-"

The doctor had to laugh. Darcy's persistent and rather overbearing interest in their adventures grew tedious, but the girl was incorrigible. "No, nothing that exciting. The geth attacked Therum. They were looking for me, because of what I know about the Protheans." She didn't see any reason to mention her kinship with Benezia. "I became trapped at the bottom of a mine, and Commander Shepard saved me."

"She's so amazing," Darcy gushed. "We were barely able to hold off the geth. People were dying. We haven't lost a single person since she got here."

Liara caught Garrus' eye, sharing an amused look. "On that we can agree."

Darcy, however, was far from finished. "I've seen every single vid about her since she became a spectre. That's the life- flitting around the galaxy in her very own spaceship, saving people and fighting bad guys." Her expression dimmed a bit as she kicked at the stairs. "Loads better than moving crates from one end of the colony to another, anyway."

Garrus tried to inject a little reality into the conversation. "Shepard worked hard to get where she is, and it wasn't easy."

"What's not easy?" Lieutenant Alenko walked up to the small group, stretching, just coming off a sleep rotation. "Garrus, they could use you over by the rear entrance."

"Right." The turian stood. "Martinez has a temper worse than Shepard's, and I didn't think that was actually possible."

"She's just scared."

Darcy interrupted, holding out her hand. "Can I take the datapad to Commander Shepard now?"

Garrus glanced at Alenko and shook his head slightly. The lieutenant sighed. "Give it to me, I'll take it."

"I want to-" Darcy began hotly.

At that moment, there was a low boom, a flash of light, and all the power in the station went out, leaving them blinking in the semi-twilight. After a stunned second everyone started shouting. They could make out Shepard's familiar bellow rising above the rest. The teenager stumbled as the hatch opened, bumping into Liara, who held her back from the sudden rush of people pouring from the hab.

The commander herself soon followed. "What the hell is going on here? We're blind as bats!"

Alenko saluted. "We're not sure, ma'am. There seems to have been some kind of power failure."

"Tell me something I don't know. Is there anything in this piece of crap colony that isn't falling apart?" She rubbed her forehead, exasperated. "It came from port side?"

"Yes, ma'am. I was about to go have a look."

Darcy pushed forward. "Commander Shepard? Ma'am? I have some very important data from Mr. Blake-"

Shepard fixed the teenager with a flat look. "Who are you?"

"Darcy Reynolds." She was taken aback by the edge in the commander's tone. "I met you when-"

"Darcy Reynolds," Shepard said with all the patience she could muster, "We have no electricity. Whatever the medical officer wants can wait until we fix this."

The girl's face fell. She took a step back.

"Right. Let's go." Shepard snapped her gaze to the turian. "You too, Garrus."

They moved out, leaving Liara and the girl. Darcy looked up at her and said in a tiny voice, "This place must really be awful, huh."

"No," Liara replied, firmly. "She's always short-tempered when she's worried. You can't take it personally. The truth is, she may be tough and irritable and sometimes downright rude, but she'd die for this colony if she had to. Being a soldier means something to her."

"My mom always said the Alliance was too good to be bothered with folks like us."

"I don't think that's true either. Do you?" Liara eyed her, questioning.

"Nobody cares about us, 'cept ExoGeni, and they only care about how much money we can make them." The words came easily, learned by rote, but her expression was uncertain.

Liara felt badly for her. This place lacked opportunities for a bright or ambitious girl, and it was clear she coped by dreaming about an idealized world beyond the borders of her colony. Now one of her heroes had come down from the sky, and the reality didn't match up to the fantasy. What harm could it do to give her some of that back, especially if it was true? "Listen to me. Shepard's survived everything the universe has thrown at her. She saved Eden Prime. Do you know Chief Williams? She rescued her, too. She got me off of Therum. She was even at the Battle of Elysium, years ago. She helps people who need her and it doesn't matter who they are. This colony is going to be fine, just wait and see."

She gave the girl an encouraging smile. After a moment, Darcy smiled back, her light-hearted disposition reasserting itself. "I better go tell Mr. Blake about his data. He wanted me to come right back."

Liara watched her scamper off, shaking her head, bemused. _Shepard certainly has an appreciable fan club. I wonder if she realizes the impact she has on her own people?_ Sometimes, it seemed like for all her prowess on the battlefield, Shepard was completely ignorant of her own personal gravity as she moved through the world.

/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\

Shepard retreated behind the shipwreck-turned-hab to consult with her omni-tool, which stored power from the movements of her own body, and contained all the correct protocols to link directly to the _Normandy_. The display was a bit lacking compared to her electricity-dependent ad hoc command center. Feros was a maze of ruined tunnels, buildings, crevasses, and rubble that could have been any or all of those things. Scanners could only do so much. Visual was shot to hell, of course, but infrared didn't do much good either with unoccupied, unpowered spaces.

_Saren's keeping us bottled up in the spaceport with regular geth assaults- never enough to quite overrun the place, never so few that I feel comfortable taking any of my people off the defenses for some recon. _She frowned over the latest round of analysis from her team. _Is that purposeful, like he wants to keep us here for some reason instead of destroying us? Or does he just not have enough geth to hold both locations?_

She worried this was a trap. What if it was only a distraction? Who the hell knew how many geth Saren had under his control, anyway? They still hadn't seen any sign of his flagship. Maybe he wasn't even here. What if this was simply a means to keep them grounded while he got a clear shot at the prize?

It was the kind of play she'd run in Saren's position, searching for a high-value target with interference dogging her ass. But Shepard operated on the premise that it was undesirable to kill innocent people trying to do their jobs. Saren hadn't shown much respect for traditional rules of engagement. Sacrificing an entire colony to keep an enemy bottled up would be nothing to him. It bothered her immensely that they had no idea what was happening at the other end of the colony. There was no movement in or out during the few hours they observed from orbit, and no one in Zhu's Hope had heard anything since the attack. The jamming signal was sadly reliable.

The building at her back gave a great shudder as the air conditioning suddenly came back online. Lights flickered to life all around the outpost.

"Fricking finally," Shepard muttered under her breath, and resumed her post inside. It wasn't much; scattered terminals, some chairs, a few crew borrowed from the _Normandy _mixed with colonists familiar with electronics. They cobbled together what maps the colonists progressed combined with their surveillance. The last two days, Shepard even resorted to interviewing colonists to try to get a sense of the terrain. But these weren't explorers. They were longshoremen and logistics coordinators.

It wasn't long before Liara rejoined her. The archaeologist was expert at interpreting images of Prothean ruins, and was familiar with their architectural conventions. She had a knack for identifying the structures in their pictures. Less happily, she'd brought the kid with her.

Shepard leveled her gaze at the pair. "What?"

Darcy held the datapad between them like a shield. Over her head, Liara mouthed, _be nice. _Shepard rubbed her forehead and dialed it back a notch. "I mean, what is it?"

The girl took a tentative step forward. "Mr. Blake, the medical officer, wanted me to deliver this to you. You asked him for an inventory of supplies and a detailed list of casualties."

She gave her as much of a smile as she could manage. "I did. Thank you."

Her finger flicked through the data. Darcy seemed to perk up a bit. She was all of sixteen, that age when every little thing was either the best moment of her life or the end of the world, nothing in between. What would have been a bad experience for an adult was happening to Darcy in technicolor. Her misguided eagerness to help, usually in fairly unproductive ways, might be grating, but she wasn't breaking down, and that was worth something.

Shepard reached for a little normalcy. "You know, when I was sixteen I was living on a naval base on Mars. It was about as boring as here."

"Really? How'd you get out?" Her curiosity overcame her intimidation.

She laughed. "I joined the marines."

The girl drifted forward another step. "Why did you want to know how everyone got injured? In the attacks, I mean."

"Because it tells me something about what the geth are trying to accomplish." Shepard set down the datapad. "They're very good shots, and talented ambushers. Frankly, they should have killed more of you. The peripheral nature of the injuries suggests that they're either trying to wear you down, or just keep you stranded. I'm not sure which."

An odd look came over her face. "You're sure that's what it is?"

"Pretty sure. I've been doing this awhile." She raised an eyebrow. "Why? You got a different theory?"

Darcy opened her mouth, but then her expression tightened, a flinch of pain. "No, ma'am. That must be right."

Shepard's brow creased. "Are you ok?"

"I'm fine," she said, a little too quickly. "Thanks for explaining. I better get back now."

"Sure." Shepard watched her leave, turning her quizzical gaze to Liara.

The asari shrugged. "It's been a rough few weeks for these people. I'm glad we're able to help."

"For as much good as we've done so far." Shepard flipped back through the maps, frustrated. Liara came up behind her and laid a hand on her shoulder.

"We've done a lot," she emphasized softly. "If nothing else, taking over defenses gave the colonists some relief."

Shepard shrugged her off. "It won't mean anything if we can't punch through to ExoGeni HQ."

Liara might have continued pressing the point, but at that moment Lt. Alenko came through the hatch and saluted. "Commander."

"Report, lieutenant. What happened?"

Liara rolled her eyes and returned to her own terminal as Alenko started to speak. "Nothing special. Looks like a capacitor overloaded and blew out half the generator."

"Not sabotage?" she inquired.

"No reason to think so." He took the seat across from her desk and leaned back in the chair, running a hand over his dirty hair. The past week was wearing on them all. The geth had no regard for human schedules, and the accommodations at Zhu's Hope were minimal between the ongoing power problems and the water shortage. They were lucky when the toilets worked. Staples like daily showers were a fantasy. "This equipment is _old_, Commander. ExoGeni bought it third hand, or so it looks, and the colonists have patched most of it with half-assed homemade repairs. The whole company is nothing but a tech mill. It should be illegal."

"At least some of it probably is." It was a big galaxy, and the chunk of it flying Systems Alliance colors grew daily. Technically, there were all sorts of laws about living conditions on colonial worlds, but in reality, they were difficult to enforce. "How'd you get it back online? I doubt anything from our stock would be compatible."

Alenko grinned. "If you wanted to fix an aging power system patched up with thirty different brands of hardware, and you're us, who would you ask?"

She frowned for a moment, puzzled, then chuckled. "Tali. Of course."

"She's got it operating at about sixty percent capacity. She thinks she might able to push it to sixty-five, maybe seventy with some time, but we're cruising in the system's afterlife now. But that's not the biggest problem."

Shepard slouched back in her chair, groaning. "Of course it's not."

"You remember Fai Dan briefing us on the water problem?"

Shepard nodded. "They retrofitted pumps to Prothean aqueducts bringing down water from the mountains up north. They've been erratic since the attack."

"Right. When the power cut out, they went offline. Now we can't even run analysis to try to work out the problem. Doyle- the woman in charge of pumps- says they need manual restarts when this happens."

"It's happened before?" Shepard shook her head. "Nevermind. So how long until we have the pumps back?"

"Well…"

Shepard buried her face in her hands. "Alenko, I'm warning you."

"Sorry, ma'am. You're not going to like it." He sighed. "The pumps are down in the tunnels, way out into geth territory."

"Alright." He was right; she wasn't happy, but the situation wasn't going to get any better for that. She looked over at one of her crew. "We're going to have to ration the water. Get an estimate of how much we have left, and put together a report for Fai Dan."

"Yes, ma'am."

Alenko interrupted. "Ma'am, with all due respect, that's not going to work. There's no reservoir here."

"Belay that." She looked back at the lieutenant. "Then we'll have to haul supplies back from the _Normandy_."

"_Normandy _can't supply an entire outpost by ferrying buckets." Alenko's disbelief was almost comical. "We don't have a stock of pipes or pumps of our own. And that's assuming her H2O generators could keep up with demand, which I doubt."

"I don't know what you're expecting me to say. You know the situation. I can't afford to send anyone to fix the pumps, and we're not exactly the frigging Corps of Engineers anyway."

"Water's not a negotiable, Commander."

She slapped the datapad on the desk. For once, he didn't wince, and for some reason that irritated her more than any of the rest of it. "Damn it, don't you think I know that? If I send a detachment, the geth will make a serious attempt at taking Zhu's Hope. _And _it's unlikely we'll ever see those marines again, given how tightly the geth have this area locked down."

Alenko folded his arms, stubborn to the last. "People need water. It's basic biology."

She returned his look levelly. "These barricades need marines. It's basic mathematics."

He studied the ceiling for several long minutes. Shepard went back to her reports. He seemed to be searching for another argument. "My mother makes the best chocolate chip cookies you've ever had in your life."

She threw down the data pad for a second time and frowned in confusion. "What the hell?"

"I'm just saying, these cookies are pretty much the best things you've ever put in your mouth. She usually sends me a batch when I'm on deployment."

Shepard raised her eyebrows. "You're what, thirty-two, and your mom still sends you care packages?"

"Says the woman who, I have on very good authority, got five pounds of chocolate from her dad the last time we were in port."

"That's different," she replied with a measure of frost. "That's for making real hot chocolate, and it is statistically impossible to survive this kind of mission without hot chocolate. That is fact, lieutenant."

Alenko was unconcerned. "As you say, ma'am. It was enough to tell me you've got a serious sweet tooth, and I will give you every last one of those cookies if you agree to let us just _try _to turn on the pumps."

Her laughter was incredulous. "You're attempting to bribe me now?"

"These aren't marines," he argued. "Civilians don't have the discipline to hold it together under the plan you're recommending. And without them, like it or not, this outpost is lost."

She contemplated him for several minutes with narrowed eyes, long enough for him to wonder if he'd crossed a serious boundary. But he held his silence, and didn't shy from her evaluation.

At last, she shook her head and pushed herself out of the chair. "Fine. We're going to get those pumps back online."

He let out a breath. "Thank you, ma'am."

Shepard whirled and jabbed a finger at him. "And not because of your pastry blackmail."

"Right." He paused. "But you're still keeping the cookies, aren't you."

"Hell yes." Shepard got Liara's attention. "I'm going to be off base for a little while. I need you to keep everyone here working these maps."

"Yes, Commander." There was a trace of worry in her voice, but by now she knew better than to express reservations once Shepard made up her mind.

Alenko, however, was surprised. "Wait, you're coming with?"

"Do you know anyone else on this crew who has any training in running a mission behind enemy lines?" She raised an eyebrow at him.

He glanced away. Shepard leaned forward and tapped a few keys at the terminal. "I can't hear you, lieutenant."

Alenko only just managed to prevent an eye roll. "No, Commander."

"Me neither." She pulled up her collection of maps. "Open a port on your omni-tool. You're going to need this surveillance."

He did as she requested, and asked, "So who's going to be left here?"

"Everyone but you and me, L.T." Shepard overrode his immediate objection. "I wasn't exaggerating. We can't afford to take anyone off the barricades, not now that Saren knows we're here. And taking a full squad only makes it more likely the geth will notice us, anyway."

"I don't follow, ma'am." Diplomatic code for _I disagree completely._

"You're the one who wants the damn water back on so badly." She sighed. "Look, after me, you're the most experienced marine here. This isn't a training wheels exercise. I can't have a bunch of newbies fumbling around waiting to get shot up by flashlight heads. Got it?"

For an instant it looked like he might take objection to her evaluation of his marines' limitations, but he swallowed it. "Yes, Commander."

She nodded towards the hatch. "Go give Williams her orders. She's got the deck, but tell her from me that if she doesn't damn well listen to Wrex and Garrus when the time comes, I'll have her commanding a desk back on Earth so fast her head will spin clear off. Antarctic base."

He drew himself to attention and saluted. "Aye aye, ma'am."

"That's what I like to hear."

/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\

The winding stairwell cut off the noise of the outpost within a few flights, the thick walls of the old ruin swallowing the human sounds behind them. It made the footfalls of their hardsuit boots seem overly loud against the stairs. Shepard was in full concentration mode now, every detail noted in her flow of awareness without the need for conscious involvement. A portion of her brain was dedicated to monitoring the incoming information, leaving the rest of her free to think and plan.

Alenko was on edge, but doing a decent job of concealing it. Her mouth curved up a bit. _Good. He should be worried._

They walked a little further, still within the safe zone, when Alenko cleared his throat. He was usually comfortable with silence. Maybe the circumstances- abandoned ruins falling down around them, geth waiting in the tunnels ahead- were affecting him more than she initially gauged.

"At least we know where the pumps are," he said, optimistically.

Shepard snorted, laughing quietly. He was puzzled. "What?"

"If we can get to the pumps along the route Doyle described, I won't complain." She shrugged. "In my experience, though, that route will be at least partially blocked by hostiles. We're going to have to crawl through this mess until we find a back way."

"Strange that they haven't sabotaged the pumps before the power outage did it for them."

"I've been thinking about that. Maybe we've got it backwards. Maybe sabotaging the pumps jolted the generator and caused it to break down somehow."

"If that's the case, for sure the pumps will be guarded."

"Everything about this mission is strange." She shook her head. "They attacked mid-day, while the colonists of Zhu's Hope were at their work. That implies a high degree of confidence in the attack's success. Also, they have to know what sections of the ruins were in use because they had to clear them. But they're not pressing the advantage much."

"Maybe Saren doesn't want to kill off Zhu's Hope for some reason."

"A few other things indicate that might be the case." Shepard hesitated, but decided there was no harm in sharing her thoughts. Alenko wasn't the type to misconstrue speculation as fact. "I thought at first he might be trying to distract us, trap us, but what if it's not about us? Maybe there's something Zhu's Hope he wants, something he thinks he can't get if he destroys the outpost. If he was willing to kill thousands on Eden Prime why hesitate to kill a few dozen here?"

"That's… a troubling thought, Commander." He made a slight sound of incredulity. "I just wish it wasn't making a certain amount of sense."

They continued on. Shepard coordinated their position to the maps stored in her omni-tool. With the thick walls blocking most signal transmissions, it traced their route by footsteps rather than triangulation, and she suspected it would not be long before the readings became entirely inaccurate. The pair emerged on the third fourth level of the ruins, and Shepard strode to a window without any glass and cautiously looked over the sill.

Alenko opened his mouth. She swiftly put a finger to her lips, quieting him, and leaned out a little further. The ceiling of the lower level below was collapsed in places. Through the gaps, pools of light illuminated the rubble, bobbing gently as their owners patrolled. Shepard watched them stalk around, getting an idea of their numbers. Very quietly, she asked, "Have you ever done anything like this, lieutenant?"

He joined her at the window, similarly cautious. "Once. Elysium."

"You were in the Blitz?"

"Second wave of reinforcements," he affirmed. "They dropped us in one of the outlying towns with few instructions beyond 'clear it out'. Let me guess, you were first wave?"

"Even better." A lopsided smile appeared at her mouth as she continued observing the geth. "I'd been tracking a mercenary cell in the Terminus for two months with Hegemony ties. Followed them there. My partner and I could've used IES- we were shot down outside of Illyria and made our way into the capitol on foot."

"Must've been a hell of a fight."

"I like to think we helped out some. The Alliance got him a pardon for what drove him into the Terminus in the first place, anyway." Shepard grimaced. "Naturally, I only got a reprimand for misuse of resources in spending mission funds to hire a mercenary."

"On the other hand, they made you a spectre because you do anything it takes to get the job done. So it seems like that worked out for you."

"Not anything." She drew back a little further from the window. "I count six or seven hostiles. You?"

"Same." He checked his pistol. "And you were right- they're on the main route to the pumps. How do you want to do this?"

Shepard studied her maps. "I think if we continue along this level, we can bypass that corridor."

Alenko peered over her shoulder. "You may be right."

The guidance provided by their omni-tools soon fizzled, as Shepard predicted, and a fallen floor forced them two levels down into the ruins. These tunnels weren't rigged with colony lighting. All they had to go by was the inadequate illumination of their gun-mounted flashlights and the very occasional gap leading to the surface and leaking grimy sunshine. There was a steady drip of water from somewhere in the distance, echoing along the walls, but otherwise the only sounds were their own movements and breathing.

Shepard took point, creeping quietly through the debris with all senses open, ignoring the near-useless ladar. Alenko monitored their rear; every offshoot corridor they passed represented an accepted risk. Tali got only garbage from the memory cores of the geth killed in the continuous assaults on Zhu's Hope, leaving the location of geth fallbacks or outposts a complete mystery.

It wasn't a sound or a flash of light that caused Shepard to pause mid-step. Alenko's wordless query was answered by pointing at the ground. Here, the customary rubble and mold from the leaking water was pushed back towards the walls, clearing the way forward. It looked recently disturbed. She signaled for him to hold position and moved up, crouching, using the high piles of fallen stone for cover.

The recon didn't take long. Shepard returned holding up two fingers, and pointed forward, mouthing the word, _Distraction?_

The look he gave her was almost amused, and he moved up ahead. Shepard followed close behind with her rifle at the ready.

As the geth came into view, Alenko took up position against the wall, shifted his pistol to his left hand, and threw out his right in a sweeping motion along the ground. There was a brief, faint buzzing in her head as the dim lines of blue light raced over the floor, the dark energy wave throwing off radiation where it interacted with the atoms of the atmosphere. She'd never noticed the noise before; she guessed she was never in a position to pay close attention.

Somewhat to her surprise, the attack was not aimed at the geth. Instead, an entire pile of debris launched into the air, flying at the two hostile targets like a blizzard of stone. It clattered against their metal bodies and drove them back, guns waving in the air as they tried to swat away the rocks.

Shepard didn't need to give the order. As soon at the geth moved, the two marines opened fire. By the time the geth realized what was happening it was all but over. In the aftermath, one attempted to fire from the ground as Shepard approached, but its arm was damaged and the shot went wide. She wasted little time putting two slugs into its flashlight head. "Clear."

Alenko lowered his pistol but did not holster it. "That was easier than I expected. Those things put up a hell of a fight."

"Usually, yeah." The gun slipped into its holster as she squatted beside the geth, flipping it onto its back. There was nothing special about the unit. Sometimes, they were simply lucky. Shepard looked up, chuckling a bit, and shook her head. "It's childish, but I never get tired of watching that."

"Watching what, ma'am?"

She gestured at the scattered stone. "The lightshow."

The lieutenant went slightly pink. "Not the reaction I usually get. Ma'am."

Shepard seemed not to notice, sitting back on her heels. "Don't know why. The things I could do if I had your talents... I can think of a lot of uses for that stuff."

"Be careful what you wish for." He paused. "There's nothing wrong with being an ordinary marine."

Her sidelong glance showed more than a hint of amusement. "You think I'm ordinary?"

His face became redder. "No ma'am. I just meant, you know, non-biotic."

"I doubt very much you would have been ordinary even without the help of a transport crash." She straightened, dusting off her hands. "Alright. Let's keep moving. We should be somewhere east of the pumps."

It was slow going, given every hallway seemed to run either west or south, but gradually they crept closer to the room Doyle indicated. It was near the bottom level of the complex. The Protheans, unlike the Romans, preferred to bury their aqueducts to protect them from most natural sources of damage. That was likely one reason the system still worked after fifty thousand years. According to Doyle, some light repair and a system flush to clear out blockages was all that was required when they first occupied Feros.

About an hour after finding the geth patrol and clearing a few other patches of resistance without much hassle, they emerged onto a rooftop terrace. The Protheans had a taste for dramatizing their architecture with level variations. Shepard wondered if that was why there were apartments climbing all the way up the curved sides of the Presidium like hanging plants. From up here, the ancient urban sprawl of Feros was on full display; she could almost get a sense of neighborhoods and flight paths for vehicles, if she closed one eye and squinted a bit. The planet was clearly trying to take back its own, with huge swaths of the city covered over by blown dirt and occasional greenery, marring her assessment.

Alenko was too focused on their predicament to take in the view. "This is a dead end. Damn it."

"Maybe, maybe not." Shepard took a look over the edge of the terrace. The half-wall intended to keep the long departed residents from falling was mostly eroded by the march of centuries. She tested the drop off with her foot. Some of the material crumbled away, free-falling to the roof far below. Shepard didn't hear it hit. "How do you feel about heights, L.T.?"

His expression was incredulous. "I live on a spaceship, ma'am. Vertigo would make that a little complicated."

"It's happened before," she said mildly.

"I don't have a problem with heights."

Shepard balanced close to the edge, her arms folded over her knees as she considered their options.

Alenko came up behind her. "Commander?"

"I am tired of getting lost like a rat in a maze." She gestured over the rooftops. "This, however, is as clear as a roadmap."

He leaned out over the edge and swallowed, once. "So how do we get down? No offense, ma'am, but this isn't a sheer wall. The terrace is overhanging the level below."

"I know."

"Unfortunately, my short-lived second career as an extreme mountaineer took a dive when I busted up my knee in a tragic ice pick incident."

She raised an eyebrow at him. "There's no need to get sarcastic. It's not like I can do it either, at least not free climbing."

His look of instant suspicion made her burst into laughter. "God, you people really do believe I can do anything. No, we're going to need some help here."

She started circling the edge of the terrace, looking for any route that was slightly more graceful than navigating a ninety degree upside down turn. Alenko caught on and began canvassing the other half. "You have to admit, it's not that much of a stretch to imagine you scaling the Andes in your free time."

"Pfft. I'm not much of an Earth girl."

"Maybe you just haven't seen it properly yet."

"I've seen enough." She wrinkled her nose, and lay down on the terrace to stick her head over the side, checking for handholds. Shepard raised her voice slightly to be heard over the ledge. "You've got all that… weather."

He made a slightly strangled noise, like he was trying not to laugh. "A little rain never killed anyone."

Nothing under the terrace offered much to hang onto. She pushed herself back. "A little rain kills people all the time. It's called flooding."

He tested a crenellation only to have it shatter as soon as it took weight. "I'm not talking about flooding. I'm talking about a… a warm steady shower, walking downtown in the middle of summer with an umbrella, no real place to go. Just taking it in. It can be sorta nice."

She grinned. "You offering to be my tour guide, Alenko?"

"You showed me Hellas Basin. Why not?" He returned her smile. "C'mon, ma'am, it's the cradle of humanity. You can't just write it off like that."

"I do appreciate Earth- for enabling us to build proper civilized spaces to live, up in orbit." Finding nothing of use on the terrace, she retreated to the hallway, hoping to uncover a shaft or stairwell off of the main chamber.

"The canned air and stale food never gets old?"

"The food's not stale," she scoffed. "It's… well-preserved." She clicked on her flashlight and peered into a shrouded side room.

Alenko let the remark pass and followed her inside. "Nothing on my end. You?"

"Take a look at this." Her fingers brushed over a myriad of cracks in the wall, stark beneath the harsh white light of the flashlight. "Feel that?"

He squatted down to get a better look and extended his hand. "Feels like air."

"Fifty thousand years. It's a wonder this place is still standing." She stood up, took a step back, and kicked her boot into the center of the cracking. The wall bowed in.

Alenko scurried out of the way. Shepard gave it another kick, and then another, and soon patches of gray sky were showing through. A few more solid blows and the opening was wide enough to crawl through. Shepard stuck her head out, and smiled.

Ducking back inside, she made an about face and started crawling out. Alenko grabbed her arm. "Commander, we'll be sitting ducks for the geth against the wall."

She blew a stray lock of hair off her face. Between the sweat induced by the stifling heat and crawling through the dust of these ruins, she likely resembled a rather large moth. "There are no geth in visual or ladar range. There are intermittent gaps the whole way down to use as cover if needed. And besides, I like the idea of dropping in our mechanical friends unannounced."

His mouth thinned into a line and that same little crease turned up in his brow, the one that put in an appearance whenever he was thinking deeply or worried. She patted his foot. "Relax. This is going to be fun."

And with that, she slipped out the gap in the wall and started climbing down to the roof.

It was a demanding climb, but she'd faced worse. Between the ongoing erosion and the original decorations, there were plenty of handholds, provided they tested them first. From the amount of stone showering her hair and shoulders, however, Alenko was having a harder time of it. More than one handhold crumbled under his grip. She glanced up a few times to make sure he was getting along ok, but stopped when she realized she was spending more time watching his ass than watching him. The angle of view was extremely distracting.

She'd sworn off a lot of things in the wake of her disastrous mission to batarian space a little over a year past- meat, meaningless pursuits, acquaintances masquerading as friendship, casual sex. Some of those decisions were working out better than others.

Shepard shook her head to clear her scattered thoughts and continued her descent.

Once they hit the roof, it was a simple matter to locate the pump room. Twenty minutes of walking, combined with a little climbing over assorted obstacles, brought them into striking distance. Shepard paused and lay down on the roof, her omni-tool between her ear and the deck.

Very little noise met her ears. Just the creaking and sighing of the old stonework. Alenko crouched nearby, omni-tool activated, his fingers dancing across its controls. Catching her look, he held out his arm so she could see what he found- a mishmash of electronic signals, streaming from somewhere nearby. She almost had to laugh. Geth might be quite "silent" at their posts, but clearly at other frequencies they were as chatty as a gaggle of schoolchildren. The feed was entirely encrypted, not that it mattered much. They'd found their target.

She pulled out her map one final time to confirm. Up on the roof, it was far easier to make the colonists' maps, the _Normandy _orbital footage, and their own position line up. The room housing the water pumps should be almost directly below them.

There was a hole in the ceiling not far from the pump room. It was a ten foot drop to the floor- easy after their climb. They fell into pitch darkness, with the soft pulse of water the only sound of note. Shepard drew her rifle and spoke in tones just shy of inaudible. "Lieutenant, what happens when the pumps stop working?"

He replied in a similar undertone. "The system overflows to a cistern."

"Right. Watch your step." She didn't want to risk a light, not with the geth so near. The blackness lost its velvety quality the further they moved from their entrance, becoming flat and cold, true blindness. Their breath, the crunching of their boots, the slight electronic protests of their weapons as grips shifted, and the thudding of her own blood took on lives of their own. She thought they were getting closer to the cistern by the lapping of the water against the stone.

They turned a corner and Shepard suddenly stretched her arm out to the side. Alenko walked right into it with a small grunt of surprise. "What-"

"Bigger room." She crouched and felt along the ground in front of her, pushing small stones out of the way of her fingers.

She heard him shift his weight, his armor creaking, and the brush of air against her neck told her he'd swept his arms up. Guard position.

"How can you tell?" he asked.

"The quality of the sound changed. More echoing." She gave up and flicked on her flashlight. Their noises already gave away their position. Not a half meter from where they stood, the walkway dropped off into a broad pool of water that stretched further than Shepard's light could reach. "Damn."

Alenko also turned on his light. "You can say that again. There's got to be a couple hundred thousand liters here if there's a drop."

She shined her light down into the water. The water was reasonably clear, but the bottom remained shrouded in darkness. The ceiling was similarly far above them. The two marines began making their way around the chamber, moving cautiously with weapons at the ready as they searched for an exit.

Suddenly, Alenko swung his pistol around, sighting on something unseen across the water. "Movement."

"Cover me." Shepard moved towards the spot. Gradually, her flashlight illuminated a small jetty of sorts, a metal pier retrofitted by the colonists jutting out into the cistern. On the end of it sat a man, maybe thirty years old, with his arms wrapped around his knees, rocking back and forth. As the light fell on him, he began to hum loudly, half-singing under his breath.

She exchanged a glance with her lieutenant before approaching the stranger with all due precaution. "I'm Commander Shepard. Who are you?"

His head snapped over his shoulder. Two beady green eyes fixed her with a piercing stare, pupils reduced to pinpricks in the sudden illumination of her flashlight. "I'm not going back!"

His voice was more hiss than human. Shepard held her ground. Her gun was pointed just shy of horizontal- enough to indicate peaceful intent, not enough to make it difficult to aim in a hurry. "I don't care where you go. I asked who you are."

"Ian." He twitched, like he'd gotten a jolt from a live wire. "You're not one of them. Not one of its play- ARRRGH!"

He clutched his head as his entire body spasmed, driving him dangerously near the water. The scream echoed off the cistern walls. Alarmed, Shepard took a step forward. "Shut up! There's geth crawling all over these tunnels."

He took a shuddering breath, and coughed wetly, rolling over onto all fours. "I know. I can feel them. They're like a cancer."

Shepard stole a glance at Alenko, who was dividing his attention between her conversation and the entrance. He was less unnerved than she feared. Her eyes slid back to Ian. "What do you mean, you can feel them?"

"They're a thorn in the side of the-" He was interrupted by another scream. It was almost like some kind of seizure.

She risked another few steps. "Are you ok?"

Ian started to laugh, a fluid-choked chuckle that sounded more than a little forced. "No. No, it's good. Pure. The pain is a reminder."

"A reminder of what?" At this point, she cared less about what was wrong with him than how to best quiet him humanely before he brought every hostile in this rat maze down on their heads. If she kept him talking, maybe she could get close enough…

His smile was haunting in the pale ring of light. "That I'm still free."

"Ma'am!" Alenko's voice was sharp, distracting her from Ian. He had his ladar up on his omni-tool. A whole swarm of returns were converging on their location.

"Shit. Lights!" They clicked their flashlights off, plunging them into darkness.

She heard Alenko shuffle closer to her position. "Orders, ma'am?"

Shepard shut her eyes, recalling the known terrain. There was no telling where the walkway around the cistern came out, if it came out anywhere, and there was no time to think. "Can you swim in a hardsuit, L.T.?"

Despite the circumstances, he responded with a dry chuckle. "Don't know. Haven't tried since basic."

"Time for a refresher." She nodded towards the water, though neither man could see her. "I've got our friend. Go!"

They plunged into the cistern, Shepard grabbing Ian under his shoulders as her feet left the platform.

The water was tepid, below body temperature, and it felt of slime and stunk of stagnation. She wished there was a way to seal off her nose entirely. Ian coughed and sputtered as she managed to drag his head clear of the surface. The cistern wasn't too deep, maybe three or four meters, just enough to drown in it if you were unlucky. She managed to get herself around the struggling man so as to functionally immobilize his arms and paddled backwards, away from the sound of their splash. He at least had the sense to stay quiet. Shepard thought she could hear Alenko treading water nearby, but it was impossible to be certain.

There was shuffling at the door. Too many metal feet to make anyone comfortable tromped along the path. Shepard quietly moved out towards the center of the cistern, recalling the limited range of her flashlight. Her hardsuit was designed for vacuum operation and sealed her in like a thermos from the neck down. Ian, however, would stand out bright as day on an infrared scan. She kept as much of him below the surface of the water as she could, to mask his heat with its relative chill. Ladar was less troubling. If they couldn't see the chamber, they had no way of knowing if a given ping was a target or merely another piece of drifting debris.

Shepard held her breath as the flashlights on shore turned towards their location. She couldn't make out the geth sporting them, and hoped it was a good sign.

She should have been afraid. That was the appropriate response, the understandable one. Instead she was… exhilarated, waiting in the dark, holding her breath, balanced on the edge of a cliff and waiting to see if the wind would blow her over. It was better than driving, and it was better than drugs. It was better than sex. And about as deadly in the long run as all three put together.

_They're not leaving. _Across the cistern, a lengthy debate must have been taking place over the airwaves. How long could it possibly take for a machine to make a decision? _Maybe they're waiting for orders. _

She was preparing to fling herself under the water, if necessary, when there was a sudden explosion from down the hall where they entered. Immediately, as one body, the geth fled towards the noise.

Shepard wasted no time making for the pier. She shoved Ian up onto the platform, where he lay choking and gasping, before hauling herself up after and snapping on her flashlight. She offered an arm to Alenko to drag him out. "What the hell was that? It sounded like an Alliance munition."

"It was." He swallowed a few lungfuls of air, crouched and dripping on the floor. "Grenade."

She blinked at him. "How the fuck did you throw it like that in the dark?"

"I didn't. I floated it under the water and brought it up where I thought the entrance was. Got a little lucky there." Alenko shook his head. "I never thought years of pushing cups and pencils around biotically would come in handy."

"Nice work. It's not going to last." She swung the light around. "There. Another hatch." Shepard jerked her head towards Ian. "Grab him."

Her rifle reappeared in her hands as she made for the exit, Alenko and Ian stumbling behind her. She braced herself against the wall and checked the next corridor. "Clear!"

They slipped through it, and Shepard bolted the hatch behind them. She snapped her fingers in front of Ian's face. "Ian."

His head lolled. "And they said I was nuts."

"Ian, we need to know what's going on here," she said urgently. "The geth want something. This attack isn't random. What is it?"

"I- aaarrrrgh!"

"What's doing this to you? Why can't you talk about it?"

"You don't understand. I like talking about it." He giggled, like a small child, his dark hair dripping water onto his face. "It's like- it's like running through a thorn bush, see, the faster you run the more the thorns grab you and try to hold you in place, but at least you're trying."

Alenko glanced at her. "Someone's conditioned him to feel pain in association with this topic. I've read about it, but never seen it work so severely."

She tried a different tact. "Was it something ExoGeni found, here in the colony? A Prothean relic?"

"ExoGeni!" He spat, coughing. "Bastards. Betrayed us, just like your precious Systems Alliance."

Her eyes strayed down the dark length of the hall, all too aware that the geth knew these tunnels, and she did not. "How did ExoGeni betray you, Ian?"

"They gave us-" He was forced to pause again as his whole body seized with pain, ending in another haunting chuckle. Ian wiped the spittle from his lips. "Lizbeth tried to help. But that's not what it wants. She knew better than to give it what it _wants_."

The hair stood up on the back of her neck. "What does it want?"

He descended into mumbling, frequented by muscle spasms as his brainwashing administered its discipline. Shepard rubbed her forehead, frustrated.

Alenko was looking over his shoulder at the locked hatch. "What now, ma'am? We can't just leave him like this."

Ian's head shot up. His eyes blazed. "You can't make me go back!"

"The colony can give you the help you need," Shepard reasoned, attempting to soothe. "You can see Lizbeth. Alright?"

"They have… Lizbeth?" For a moment he sagged, but then he started, shaking himself free of Alenko's grip with considerable force. "No. No! You lie! ExoGeni would never allow it!"

And with that, he took off down the hall, his bare feet slapping against the concrete and his wordless cries echoing off the walls. Shepard tried to snag him as he ran by, but his wet arm twisted out of her hand. "What the hell?"

"He's lost it. Sad, but nothing we can do." Alenko took a deep, steadying breath. "We still have to find those pumps. We should be close."

Shepard brought up her omni-tool one last time. "North of here." She glanced up. "Tunnel runs north. Let's go."

They pushed forward through the dark, the long length of the hallway falling swiftly behind them. Shepard was confident that if the geth breached the hatch they left sealed, it would not happen in silence, but her shoulders still itched as though a target was painted between them until they turned a few corners.

Water rolled down from her soaked hair and pooled at the collar of her hardsuit. Her teeth grated in irritation. She hated getting her hair wet while it was up- it was so heavy and it stayed that way for days. Shepard wiped the scraggles back from her forehead and signaled a stop. Carefully, she dropped into a crouch and peered around the corner.

The narrow room was filled with geth. A large pipe illuminated faintly by a pair of terminals ran along one wall. Shepard withdrew, rapidly, and answered Alenko's questioning look with a grimace and a handful of signals. _Target ahead. Many hostiles._

His answering grimace said he understood. Shepard sat up against the wall and began checking over her weaponry. In theory, her equipment was immune to water damage, but she didn't fancy charging into a dicey situation after a dunking without being sure. Everything appeared in order; the workings were dry and unfolded easily, her chosen modifications still activated.

Beside her, Alenko simply drew his pistol and then stared into space as he waited, his mouth a thin line in the almost-dark. She hoped he was ready for it. They were outnumbered, and to some degree outmatched by the geth's sensors, but they retained the advantage of surprise- and when it came to fighting in the dark, Shepard would put human adaptability up against hardwired AI logic any day.

She touched his shoulder to get his attention, and indicated she would move up first. Her boots shuffled against the concrete, nearly as noiseless as the machines themselves, and she took up position behind another pipe jutting out from the left wall. Alenko took cover around the corner, took a deep breath, and gave her a nod. _Ready._

Shepard unclipped three grenades from her belt and rolled the lot of them towards the far wall. The geth had only just started to turn towards the clatter when they exploded.

She didn't wait for the smoke to clear, setting her assault rifle atop the metal pipe and firing in short, sweeping blasts into the confusion. With nothing to see there was nowhere to aim, but she wasn't about to let a pesky detail like that stop her, not when there were at least a dozen geth to their two marines. With luck, her fire would keep them confused, bottled up.

There was no pistol counterpoint. She stole a glance behind her, to find her lieutenant entirely in cover, with only the orange glow of his omni-tool to explain his plan, whatever it was. She remembered how he took out the geth stealth unit's shield generator on Therum, and decided to trust him. Not like she had much choice, anyway. In the second she'd stopped firing to evaluate, the geth already began to press forward.

Her finger held and released the trigger methodically. Shepard was as proficient with technology as anyone raised in her age, but that was as far as it went. She had no patience for fiddly things. Shepard aimed at a light emerging from the cloud of dust and heard a geth collapse onto the floor.

They were coming faster now as the chaos of the grenade strike faded. She was forced to spend more and more time in cover. One of the machines advanced even with her position, along the aqueduct across the room, and she shot out its knees. "Better speed it up, L.T.!"

"Roger that," he muttered, and entered a final command. "Got it!"

Shepard ducked behind the pipe and pulled out her own pistol, the heat sink on her rifle failing under the demand. "Got what?"

There was some rapid, disbelieving cursing from around the corner. "It should have- they must've learned from the others-"

"I don't give a fuck!" Shepard moved the pistol seamlessly, hardly stopping to aim at the advancing geth. Each shot found a target, but it took more than one to take a unit down, and if she focused fire the others would cease their caution. "Pick up that damn gun of yours!"

There was no panic in her voice, only steel, though the situation gave them plenty of cause. Shepard knew how to enforce an order by her tone. It wasn't more than a second before his fire joined hers.

She switched back to her cooled assault rifle, and tried to think with any part of her mind not preoccupied fighting for their lives. The room was small, the geth's defensive fire was dense and they were rapidly running out of time. She needed a new idea.

Her eyes settled on the aqueduct. "Cover me!"

Shepard threw herself into a roll that crossed the small space and landed her next to the pump controls installed by the colonials. They were entirely offline. No help there. Her shield chirped a warning as it absorbed three bullets in rapid succession. There was little cover to be had on this half of the room.

_Well, that's what the armor's for_. A touch of amusement crossed her face as she struggled against the rust of the relief valve.

The shield failed. Luckily, between the crowding and the debris, the geth were not particularly good shots. The few that hit, however, were enough to nearly knock her off balance. She had to shake her head. "Going to need a lot of repair when this is over."

"What, ma'am?" Alenko yelled from across the room, where he took up station at her old post.

"Retreat!" she called as the valve finally gave way, flooding the far end of the room with a gush of water as strong as a firehose. Her hand fumbled under the console until she located the thick bundle of electrical cabling, running all the way from here to Zhu's hope, and gave it a solid yank before fleeing the room herself.

They ran past the doorway and around the corner, down the hallway to the nearest hatch, maybe thirty paces, when Shepard turned and pressed herself against the wall. Alenko copied her, but not without anxiety. "Commander-"

"Shh. Wait." She kept her eyes- and her gun- fixed down the corridor.

"We're right out in the open-"

"Wait." Shepard was perfectly calm.

A few seconds later, there came a titanic boom followed by a cascade of loud crackling sounds, hissing and spitting like sparklers on a holiday. A shower of light flowed around the corner in flickering bursts, accompanied by electronic garbage, followed by silence.

Shepard allowed herself a small smile. "Come on."

They found the remaining geth lying limbs askew in the ever-spreading puddle of water. The bundle of wires shuddered and danced in the wet. Here and there, a machine twitched.

The commander raised her gun, studiously avoided the slow wave flowing towards their boots, and nodded to the cable. "Can you lift that out?"

"Aye aye, ma'am."

"Good." She fired several rounds into each of the twitching machines, then radioed back a report, requesting the power be cut to the pumps until they could secure the situation.

Some minutes later, Alenko was running his thumb over the torn wiring, shaking his head. "Good grief."

Shepard was perched cross-legged on the pipe opposite the now-useless terminal, with her gun laid across her lap and an air of smugness. "Can you fix it?"

He muttered something that sounded rather unkind. Shepard's smile grew slightly wider. "I can't hear you, lieutenant."

"How in the hell did you know they wouldn't be insulated, anyway?"

"Of course they were insulated," she said, affronted. "Hell, so are we. But soaking wet? They didn't search the water back at the cistern."

"Big risk."

"I didn't see you thinking up anything better," she said mildly. "Anyway, _can _you fix it?"

"It's going to take awhile. I need to call Tali. And Doyle." The look he gave her was utterly exasperated. "You are much better at destroying this stuff than using it. Err, Commander. Ma'am."

"When you're a woman of a singular talent you learn to make do."

The repair took hours. Fortunately, they'd either routed all the geth in the immediate area, or the machines had lost their taste for confrontation today. Shepard spent most of it putzing around and demanding updates on the search for Saren while Tali and Doyle argued over the best method to repair the terminal and walked Alenko through the procedures. At last, however, the pumps roared back into life and the terminal showed all systems green.

Their walk back to Zhu's Hope was triumphant, as they emerged from the maze of tunnels coated head to toe in dust and dirt, rendering them almost unrecognizable. They sauntered towards the barricade, where a mix of confused marines and colonists peered up at them from behind the crates.

"Stand down," Shepard called out, her tone easy.

They glanced nervously towards their rear. Williams stood and squinted at them. "Commander? L.T.?"

"Did I stutter, Chief?"

"No, ma'am!" Williams glared at the people around her. "You hear the Commander! What are you waiting for?"

Gradually, the guns lowered and two of the marines dragged back the barricade barring entry to the outpost. Williams was still staring at them slack-jawed. "You've been gone for ages."

"Long story." Shepard flashed her a smile, her teeth bright in her grime-coated face. "But first I need a shower. I want a piece of this water I spent all day turning on."

She turned towards the hab, but before she could take another step, a short woman like a blonde bullet shot towards her and landed a solid right hook on her jaw.

Shepard staggered back, caught by surprise, but it wasn't her first fist-fight. She caught the next blow as it was coming and twisted the arm behind her assailant's back, just shy of breaking. "What the hell?"

Greta Reynolds attempted to struggle free, but went still as she felt the strain in her arm. Her face, white with rage, took on a slight tinge of fear as well.

"Let me go," she snarled. "You army bitch, you've done enough harm-"

"Greta!" Her husband Davin was not far behind, and Fai Dan was dogging his footsteps. "It's not her fault."

"The hell it isn't!" Greta jerked again, seeming not to care if her arm did snap. Shepard was forced to loosen her grasp a fraction.

"Please release her, Commander," Fai Dan requested, maintaining his calm. "You have my word, she will not assault you again. Will you, Greta?"

The woman snarled again, wordlessly, but gave a curt nod.

Shepard shoved her away, where she was caught by her husband. "Would somebody like to tell me what the hell this is about?"

Davin wrapped his arms around his wife, seemingly as much to keep her still as to offer comfort. "It's Darcy. She's gone."

The commander blinked. "Gone?"

"She left this." Fai Dan handed her a datapad. "It would seem our Darcy has decided to go after her young man, trapped at ExoGeni headquarters."

Shepard scanned the document, her eyes growing wider at every line. "What in blazes was she thinking? Those tunnels are crawling with geth."

Fai Dan gave a delicate cough. "There is some indication that she believed that it was what you would do."

"I never told her-" Her eyes flicked over Darcy's words, earnest as only a teenager could be, and as foolish. "God, but this is a special kind of stupid."

"Don't you start!" Greta's eyes blazed. "Your people are the ones who fed her all those stories, about the people you've saved! She never would have-"

"Greta," Davin interrupted again, trying to calm her. "This isn't helping us get her back."

Shepard lifted her gaze from the datapad. "'Get her back'?"

Fai Dan folded his hands mildly. "Yes, Commander. We are eager to hear your plan."

"My plan?" Shepard was at a total loss. She glanced from Williams to Alenko, and saw the same thought written on their faces- the tunnels were endless, and the odds of being able to find her, let alone find her alive, were vanishingly small.

She licked her lips and tried for some diplomacy. "I understand this is difficult, but our resources are already scarce-"

"You _understand_?" Greta spat. "Understand this, _Commander_. You are going to find my little girl, or so help me God I will kill you myself, if it's the last thing I ever do."


	24. Chapter 24

_We do not antagonize civilians. We do not antagonize civilians._

Shepard took a deep breath and looked up into Greta Reynolds' blazing eyes. _We do not __**strike**__ civilians._

Fai Dan drifted a few steps to his left, subtly inserting himself between the two women. "Please. There is no need for threats."

Alenko, likewise, took a step closer to her, and glanced around uneasily at the marines and colonists manning the barricade, who were beginning to rumble. "Commander, maybe we should discuss this somewhere else."

"I'm getting a shower," she said abruptly. "I need to think. We can talk about the situation after."

Before anyone could raise an objection, she turned on her heel and stalked towards the hab, dust drifting off her with every step.

The water had no time to get hot, but given the climate on this part of Feros, she wasn't bothered. Shepard stood under the cold stream for the better part of ten minutes, not reaching for the soap, trying to reign in her jumble of emotions and kick her tired brain into action. _Dammit. This is NOT my fault. I never told that girl to do anything. Greta's fear is making her stupid, that's all. _

But there was more than a little guilt edging the thought, irrational or not. Ash's admonitions came drifting back. _It doesn't matter if you asked. You're still a hero to a lot of people. They look up to you._

_And this is why they damn well shouldn't. _What the hell did Darcy think she would accomplish besides getting herself killed? Even assuming one teenaged girl could make it past god knew how many geth recon patrols, nobody knew how to navigate the tunnels to get to ExoGeni HQ. At absolute best, Darcy would wind up lost and starving in the maze that was the Prothean ruins. Did she even had the wits to take a weapon with her, or water?

There was no way of guessing which way Darcy went, even if Shepard was inclined to send a rescue team. They'd have to get half the people here sweeping the tunnels to have a chance of finding her. Meanwhile, the geth would overrun Zhu's Hope and accomplish whatever it was Saren was after. It was frustrating to still have no clear idea, even after a week on the ground.

Shepard looked up into the falling water. _How could anyone be so stupid?_

And then she paused, because while Darcy was a lot of things, among them young, self-centered, and idealistic, she wasn't a fool. She wouldn't have done this without some kind of plan. _Her parents hate her boyfriend, and they live on opposite ends of the colony. Davin heads up logistics for the spaceport, which means most of the people working the supply runs answered to him. It's damn unlikely his daughter was hitching a ride in the shuttles to visit._

She held her breath, ran the tip of her tongue over her lips. _It could have been an extranet romance. Or they could have found another way to meet._

Darcy knew the gravity of the situation. They'd only asked the colonists a hundred times if they knew how to cross on foot. Surely, if she had any idea…

_She's sixteen. She thought her parents would be furious. _Shepard grimaced. _Worse, she thought she'd lose her only means of seeing her boyfriend._

The story felt right. No choice, either way. They were at an impasse and it was unlikely any new information would be gleaned from additional study. That left only the undesirable option of disabling the AA guns with an orbital strike that would destroy much of what was left of the Feros colony, as well as endanger the _Normandy_. If there was any chance, any at all, that Darcy knew of a route to HQ, Shepard needed to find her.

Her fingers worked through her hair, making certain she removed the last of the macroscopic dirt, before turning off the water. There was no point to soap if she was headed back into the ruins. She dried off as best she could, pinned her hair back up in its Alliance-approved bun, and strapped on her armor.

The family was where she left them. Greta was pacing, hugging herself, her expression now a cold mask. Davin was leaning against a barricade, staring out into the tunnels. Fai Dan had recruited Martinez, and they were talking quietly, going silent as Shepard approached.

She ignored them all and focused on Fai Dan. "I need something to work with if you want to go after her. Do you know where she might have started off, trying to get to HQ?"

He was quiet almost a full minute. There was something going on behind his eyes that Shepard couldn't read. Almost like a struggle. It both disturbed and intrigued her.

At last, he said, almost forcefully, "She hasn't gone far."

"You mean, you think she hasn't gone far."

He kept going as if he hadn't heard her. "She would have gone through the basement tunnels… I can…"

Fai Dan winced, once, and cleared his throat. "It would be best if I accompanied you, Commander."

Before she could respond, a new piece of strangeness interrupted. At once, both of the Reynolds along with Martinez began protesting. "You can't leave. It's too dangerous."

"You're too important to this colony."

"It won't-" Davin cut himself off as a spasm shook his body, leaving him ashen-faced.

Shepard looked from one person to the next, her brow knitted. "This is your daughter. Don't you want the best chance of getting her back?"

They were silent. Greta tried to say something, but couldn't seem to push the words out. Shepard turned back to Fai Dan. "What the fuck is going on here?"

"There is no need for concern," he said calmly, his gaze including the colonists as well as the commander. "All will be well. I will be in no danger."

There was no time to figure this out, whatever it was. "Grab whatever you need and let's get moving."

"I have all that I require." Fai Dan's placid demeanor in the face of everything that happened to date was unnerving. As far as she could tell, he was wearing ordinary clothes, no defensive gear, and his only offensive weapon was a small caliber pistol tucked into his belt.

"Right," Shepard replied mildly, not allowing it to get to her. She glanced over at her marines. "Lieutenant, the deck is yours. If she's not far I should remain in radio contact."

"Aye aye, ma'am." Alenko saluted.

"Lead the way," she said to Fai Dan with a sweeping gesture. More tiredness than she would have liked seeped past her gallantry. It had been a long day already.

There was no sign of hesitation as he led her down the stairs into the lower tunnels. Shepard had not spent much time here. Apparently, neither did the colonists. There was no electric lighting laid out, nor was any of the debris of time cleared away. At least it was dry, and relatively cool, compared to the furnace of the surface.

Fai Dan led her through a series of turns with equal confidence though there were no markings to tell where they were going. Darcy, if indeed she passed this way, didn't leave a trail. "You come down here a lot?"

"Occasionally," he answered, absently, as he paused at the end of a hall. It split into two corridors leading north and east.

"You seem to know your way around."

"It's not hard if you know what to look for."

"So tell me," Shepard said, growing impatient with vagueness. "What should I be looking for?"

Fai Dan tensed in the harsh circle of her flashlight. "We should go left here."

"You ignored my question. Seems like you ignore a lot of my questions, Fai Dan."

"Perhaps you are asking the wrong ones?" He stepped carefully around a portion of the ceiling that had caved in. "We must be cautious."

Shepard glanced at the ceiling, uneasy, and hoped the structural failure was a localized event. "I met one of your colonists out by the water pumps. He said his name was Ian."

"Mr. Newstead." The older man sighed, regretful. "Yes. He left our company some time ago."

"He seemed to have undergone some severe pain conditioning."

"Ian brought his… madness upon himself. Unfortunately, one cannot help a man who does not desire it."

She chose her next words carefully. "I couldn't help but notice some of your own people flinching, sometimes, when they try to speak. You wouldn't know anything about that?"

"I have no idea what you mean, Commander."

"If ExoGeni's been mistreating you, there are actions you can take. The Alliance takes a dim view of illegal research, especially when it involves citizens."

A razor edge entered into Fai Dan's tone. "I understand you mean well, but I assure you, your concern is unfounded. Wait."

He held out his arm. Shepard couldn't see an obstacle. "What-"

Fai Dan put a finger to his lips and turned out his light. Following her gut, without knowing why, she copied his actions. They stood in the dark with their blood pounding loud in their ears.

Then she heard it- the unmistakable clank of geth feet on a hard floor. Shepard pressed herself to the wall, her thumb running along the scratched side of her drawn rifle. They were so close that even the slight electronic noise of its trigger responding to her familiar touch might alert them.

The metallic footfalls drew nearer, approaching from north of the intersection where they hid. She could see the white illumination of its head-mounted flashlight reflecting off the walls. Shepard stopped breathing.

There were two of the machines, both the standard units that made up the bulk of geth forces, each carrying a drawn rifle. Their narrow heads never wavered from their course as they walked right by the adjacent tunnel, taking no note of the humans standing not more than ten feet away. Shepard could hold her breath quite a long time, an obscure bit of training intended to help her survive hostile environments, but her lungs were burning before she allowed herself to breathe again following the geth's passage.

Fai Dan waited until the footsteps were silent entire minutes before stepping away from the wall. "We must hurry now."

"Wait." Shepard grabbed his wrist. "How did you know they were coming?"

"Is it not obvious? I heard them."

Shepard remembered the gap between stopping and when she first heard the geth, but there was a more pressing question on her mind. "There's no chance a sixteen-year-old scouts her way around geth patrols."

"Not even a sixteen-year-old Commander Shepard?" His eyebrows rose, as though he found the notion amusing.

She didn't allow herself to be deflected with flattery. "No. Why do you believe she's still alive?"

"I-" He cringed from the question. "Perhaps I do not know. Perhaps we will take her body back to her parents."

With stiff dignity, Fai Dan removed his arm from her grasp, rubbing the red mark where she held it. "We must continue."

Shepard followed him down the darkened hall, switching her flashlight back on, but refused to drop the argument. "You know. I see the certainty in you. How?"

"We must continue," he said again, a broken record, refusing to engage.

Her exasperation was evident, but she continued tracing his footsteps. "Ian told me he could sense the geth, but he couldn't tell me why. He started screaming in pain when he tried."

For the first time, Fai Dan paused, his expression almost sad. "Ian was very troubled. He could not accept…"

"What?" Her face clouded over. "What couldn't he accept, Fai Dan?"

He grimaced. "It is no matter. We are very close now."

Nothing about this felt right. Shepard spent an entire day eluding and fighting geth like the ones they just passed, and picking her way through the maze of ruins. By comparison this was surgical, easy, simple- so much so that she wondered that Fai Dan hadn't simply gone alone.

However, when they came out into a larger room, open to at least two stories' height, and they saw Darcy seated before the device, his reasons became clearer.

Her back was to them as she sat, cross-legged, gazing up at the technological tower the geth had raised within the chamber. It possessed an odd elegance, with lines as fluid and streamlined as the geth themselves, but also strangely alien, the proportions or the degree of curvature or _something _creating a disquiet in the human eye. Shepard activated her omni-tool and set it to transmit. "Shepard to base. You getting this?"

Static. She switched to pure audio, putting her finger to her ear. "Shepard to base. Come in."

She glanced at Fai Dan. "I don't get it. We're not that far from Zhu's Hope."

He was staring up at the tower with faint, undisguised disgust. "I believe we may have found the source of the jamming signal."

"No, that's not possible." She shook her head, queuing up a signal diagnostic. "We encountered this on Eden Prime. The signal comes from Saren's flagship."

The omni-tool's program took a quick frequency scan, and began to break it down. Shepard ordered a comparison between this sample and the one stored from Saren's first attack. Her eyes narrowed. "Or maybe not."

The signal used at Eden Prime was designed to jam long-range communications, but apparently, right up next to it, it was quite effective at blocking out short-range transmissions as well. Another thought, more exciting. "If the radius of effect is limited, and we assume Saren wants to block out both ends of the colony, we could use this device to approximate where he's hiding."

"Commander, something's wrong," Fai Dan said, breaking her focus. He was crouched beside the girl, fastidiously avoiding contact. Darcy was completely ignoring his presence. As Shepard circled around, she saw her mouth was moving, the same series of motions over and over, as if she were silently mouthing some kind of mantra. The hair rose on the back of her neck.

The tower was emitting a thrumming sound, just this side of human audible range, at the low end. It made Shepard's head hurt, a deep, steady bass note of an ache. It pulsed with a thin blue light in concert with the noise.

"What the hell is this?" she muttered, more to herself, but Fai Dan overheard.

"Commander Shepard, please. We can wonder about the technology later."

She gave herself a shake. "Right."

Joining him on the floor beside the girl, she snapped her fingers in front of her face. No reaction. "Darcy. Hey. Wake up, we've got to go."

She continued to gaze at the tower, indifferent to her words. Shepard tried a different tact. "Darcy, your parents are waiting for you."

Her eyes snapped to Fai Dan. "The boyfriend. What's his name?"

He caught on immediately. "Darcy, Ben's waiting for you. He's very concerned."

Darcy's eyelids flickered, but there was no further response.

Shepard switched tactics. "Can we drag her out?"

"It will hard getting her back to Zhu's Hope without her cooperation." He pursed his lips, worried.

She slipped her hands under the girl's shoulders and tried to lever her to her feet. "Maybe if we get her away from it, she'll snap out of it."

Darcy weighed hardly anything at all. Dragging her back to the hall was easy. Waking her up from her trance, however, continued to prove difficult. Fai Dan knelt in front of her and stared into her eyes, felt her neck, checked her vital signs. She resisted as much as a ragdoll.

Shepard's attention kept shifting back to the jamming tower. Part of her argued that it was a valuable piece of technology, maybe vital to locating Saren's dreadnought. A bigger part of her didn't want any of her people within a parsec of this device. Whatever it did to Darcy… she didn't understand. And her own head continued to throb to its beat. "Stay in the hall."

Fai Dan glanced up. "What are you planning?"

"Just stay back." Shepard circled the tower, looking for a control panel or a power transformer, anything that might give her access to its inner workings. "So much care went into this. It's almost like some kind of shrine."

"That doesn't make any sense."

"What does, when it comes to the flashlight heads." She located the generator, and smiled. A little omnigel and the lid slid off.

In the corridor, Fai Dan was growing nervous. "Commander, what are you doing?"

"Taking this bastard device offline." The tangle of chemistry and wires within the generator was beyond her comprehension, so she fell back on something she did understand, unclipping a pair of grenades from her suit's utility belt. "Clear the door."

He didn't argue, but scrambled out of the way as she tossed the explosives into the generator and ran for the exit. The hatch was only halfway shut behind her when they went off, slamming it the rest of the way into its frame and sending the commander sprawling face-first onto the hard concrete. The rough surface tore a nice scrape down her cheekbone and left her disoriented.

Shepard raised her head with a groan. Wisps of red hair torn loose by the blast hung down into her eyes. _Why do I ever even bother with cleaning up?_

Fai Dan and Darcy, however, seemed hardly to realize anything had happened. He was holding her face in both his hands, tilted up towards him, his own eyes shut with an expression of intense concentration. Shepard tried to blink away the fog. "What the hell are you doing?"

The words came out more slurred than confrontational. _Never go anywhere alone. Civilians don't count. _If she weren't so damn tired already, she would have remembered that.

She just about managed to raise herself to her knees when Fai Dan suddenly broke off contact, leaning back from the girl at a more respectable distance. Darcy's great dark eyes blinked rapidly, darting around the hall. It was like watching the lights come on in an empty house. "Where… where am I?"

Fai Dan spoke softly. "You're safe. We're underground, in the ruins."

The girl folded in on herself as she processed that, leaning over like she was about to be sick. "My parents are going to kill me."

Shepard staggered to her feet. If her head was hurting before, it was nothing compared to now. She cracked open the hatch to examine the room. "Confirmed target down."

The once-elegant tower was lying in several large pieces on the floor, more-or-less intact, but the light and noise had gone. Of the generator only scrap remained. She tried her transmitter. "Shepard to base, come in."

There was a crackle of static. Liara's voice came on the comm. "Shepard? We've had another attack here. Nobody was hurt."

"Copy that." She glanced at the pair of colonists. "We've secured the girl. Standby for image transmission."

Shepard bundled up the pictures of the intact device with those of its current state, along with her signal scans. There was a long pause from the other end. "What is this?"

"Geth jamming tower. Pass them around. I want to know how it works." Fai Dan was helping Darcy find her feet. Shepard bit her lip, torn between getting the civilians away from the downed tower asap and the desire to conduct some recon of the area. Surely, if they hid such an important strategic device down here, some kind of command post couldn't be far.

Between the colonists' lack of self-defensive capability and what she suspected was a mild concussion on her part, caution won. "We're headed home. Shepard out."

Darcy seemed increasingly cognizant as they made their way back to Zhu's Hope. It was a good thing, too; the trio passed several additional geth patrols on the way out, each more nerve-wracking than the last. Fai Dan always managed to detect them in time to get out of sight. Shepard remained frustrated and confused by this almost super-human sensory capacity, but had given up digging for answers in the face of his false ignorance whenever the subject was raised.

Greta and Davin fell on them before they were past the first set of barricades, Darcy disappearing beneath their hugs and admonishments tangled with endearments.

The light was fading as evening turned into night. Shepard blew out a long breath, sweeping back the wayward strands of hair from her face, and located Alenko and Williams near the back. "Liara said there was another assault?"

"Yes, ma'am," the lieutenant confirmed. "Three units, more of the same. Probably a scouting party."

"What the hell do they think they're going to learn that they don't know already?" Saren's strategy, or lack thereof, was maddening. _Take the spaceport or don't, but stop testing the waters. I'm getting sick of all this waiting._

"Couldn't say, ma'am."

Williams slid her rifle into its holster on the back of her hardsuit and folded her arms. "We got the memory cores to Tali, but she's not optimistic."

Shepard shook her head. "They probably improved their self-destruct protocols after Saren found out about Tali's evidence. It's what I'd do."

The family approached, with Davin in the lead. Greta kept her arm around Darcy's shoulders, her grip tight, still pale. Darcy was staring at the ground. Her father cleared his throat. "Thank you for bringing her home, Commander."

"Thank Fai Dan." She jerked her chin towards the colonists' leader. "He seemed to always be one step ahead of the geth."

Davin nodded. "It's been a long day. We need to get her to bed."

"No," Shepard said in measured tones, her gaze fixed on the teenager. "No, now we talk."

"Talk?" Davin was taken aback.

Greta, however, found her voice. "Your interrogations can wait. Our daughter needs rest."

Shepard stepped in front of her as she tried to move towards the hab. "I'm afraid it can't. I have reason to believe your daughter has been holding back information vital to repelling the geth presence in this colony."

"She's just a girl!"

Darcy looked up and took a shuddering breath. "No, mom. It's ok. I'll answer."

Greta was less than thrilled, but she held her tongue, looking on with an expression of disapproval to which Shepard was impervious. She had nothing on Hannah Shepard's glares. "Do you remember why you went into the tunnels?"

"I.." Her face reddened. "I was looking for Ben. I thought I could… help them, the other colonists." She swallowed. "I found the… whatever that was. It was like a voice in my head."

Darcy seemed so shaken, and embarrassed, that in other circumstances Shepard might have felt a measure of sympathy, but she'd spent too long on Feros risking her people's lives in defense of this outpost. "This isn't the first time you've crossed through the ruins to meet Ben."

It wasn't a question. Tears gathered in the corners of her eyes, but Shepard was relentless. "Answer me, Darcy."

She shook her head. "No. It wasn't the first time."

Her mother was staring at her, open-mouthed. Darcy looked from her to her father, pleading. "I wasn't skiving off, I swear! I'd just sneak away in the evenings sometimes. I needed to see him."

Greta's face flushed red with anger. "You think missing WORK is the biggest problem here? We told you to stop seeing him!"

"You don't understand-" Darcy began hotly, regaining some of her spine.

"Shut up." Shepard's cold fury froze out the brewing argument in the space of an instant. Her eyes flicked to Darcy. "How many kinds of short-sighted are you?"

The girl drew back a step. Shepard pressed forward. "People have been _dying_ for want of this information, Darcy. Right here, in your home, and probably across the way, too."

Another step. "We made it clear that getting to ExoGeni's outpost was essential to ending this invasion, and all along you've known exactly how to get there. What were you _thinking_?"

Darcy gave her mother a panicked glance. Greta was unforgiving. "Answer her, Darcy."

"If I told you, then everyone would know," she burst out, crying openly now. "It would spoil everything!"

"More than watching your neighbors pay the price? You haven't made it a secret how much you hate this place. Maybe you just didn't care."

Darcy blanched. Shepard was almost nose to nose with her. Alenko touched her shoulder. "Commander, respectfully, I'm not sure speculation is getting us anywhere."

Shepard was as angry as she'd ever been in her life, but she reached for a little composure and swallowed the stinging lecture on her lips. Her words were clipped with the effort of containing it as she addressed the girl. "You're going to show me exactly where we can find this route across the colony, even if I have to drag you along as a personal guide."

She swallowed. "I can- I can show you on the map. I can try."

"You'll do better than try."

/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\

Several hours later, with Darcy's information and a number of encrypted calls to the _Normandy_, Shepard sat back with a satisfied sigh. "That's it, people. I think we have a plan."

She pointed to the map, brushing hair from her eyes. Half her bun had fallen down about her face. "We raise the _Normandy _to roof level and take the mako across to the broken road, here."

"The skyway," Garrus said, leaning forward and rubbing his hands. "If Saren's smart, he'll have fortifications strung out along it."

Shepard nodded. "That's why we're taking the mako. You, Liara, and I will cross over and try to locate survivors, to see if they can tell us what Saren wants with this place. Failing that, we'll scout HQ and try to break into their data files. He's not budging until he has it or we have it."

Tali interrupted. "I should go with you. I've already cracked the files ExoGeni left at Zhu's Hope. You might need the help."

Shepard blew out a breath. "Four makes for a crowded tank."

"Tali and I don't take up much space," Liara argued. "We can bunch up with you in the front while Garrus takes the gun."

"Fine." She didn't see the point in debating it. "While we're gone, Lt. Alenko will hold down the fort here. I'm leaving you Wrex and Williams as command support."

"Aye, Commander." He studied the map with a small frown of concentration. "What do you think will happen when Saren realizes we're not neatly bottled up anymore?"

"All hell breaks loose," Wrex rumbled with an eager smile. He sounded pleased.

Shepard shrugged. "Could go either way. He could hit Zhu's Hope with everything he has to spare while our forces are divided, or draw back to defend his primary position. Or he could decide our incursion isn't big enough to worry about and nothing changes. We need to be ready for anything."

She shuffled to the next screen. "Moving along. Pressly has the _Normandy_, and he'll be giving the orders while I'm behind the jamming signal. I've left him instructions. We'll shut the signal down if we can, but unless we can convince Saren to leave, I'm not optimistic. I doubt he'll be open to the suggestion." Shepard looked at Tali. "Any progress on identifying that geth device we found?"

Tali shook her head. A burst of air crackled through her ventilator, a kind of sigh. "No. The design bears some similarities to geth technology I've seen before, but other parts of it…"

She trailed off. Alenko cleared his throat. "Nobody's seen anything like it, Commander. Not here, not back on the ship."

"We sent it with our transmission back to Alliance Command?" Now that the jamming signal at this end of the station was broken, they were able to communicate with the galaxy again.

Alenko nodded an affirmative. She leaned forward and shut down the terminal. "That's it then. Get some sleep. We roll out at 0600. Dismissed."

Most of the group filed out in search of food or bed or both, leaving her alone with Williams and Alenko. She rubbed the bridge of her nose, beyond exhausted, and began fishing pins out of her hair. "God save me from teenaged girls."

Williams chuckled. Alenko likewise sat back, sticking his hands in his pockets. "How'd you know she had a route?"

"Informed guess." She let out a little laugh herself. "Come on, you never had a misguided romance before you were old enough to know better?"

He snorted. "My parents weren't exactly around to disapprove."

"No, because you were stuck on a space station with a bunch of watchful teachers and other horny kids your age." Shepard grinned conspiratorially. "I bet you knew every broom closet and bolt hole on that station."

"It wasn't like that," he protested. "I mean, I'm not like that. It's not _that _common an experience."

Shepard glanced at the chief and raised her eyebrows. "Williams?"

She blushed. "His name was Derek. He wrote bad poetry. I mean, _really _bad, like rhyming words that don't rhyme. My dad said if he showed up at our house in the middle of the night one more time he was going to make use of the garden hose."

"Case in point." Shepard shook her head. "When you fall in love the first time, it's greatest, most intense thing you've ever felt. Kids going through that stage of life are going to find a way to see each other. It's that simple."

Williams agreed. "Everyone remembers their first love. So, respectfully sir, I think you're full of shit."

"No, I just meant not everyone falls for ridiculous people the first time out."

"I guess some of us are wiser or luckier than most." Shepard shrugged, stifling a yawn. "For my part, I know I was silly at that age."

Williams yawned sympathetically. "I think I'm going to find a bed, ma'am."

"Good night, Chief." Shepard stretched back in the chair as Williams departed, sore, tired, and dirty. She looked over at Alenko. "You should think about doing the same. The days are only going to get longer until this is finished."

"Strange to say, but I'm not especially tired. I guess I'm still processing."

"Quite a day." She transferred the handful of hairpins to her mouth, held between her lips, so she had both hands free to remove the elastic band and shake out her hair.

"Yeah." He was kind of staring at her, a little.

She spat the pins back into her hand and gave him a level stare "What?"

"Nothing," he said, too quickly. Alenko coughed. "Your hair just… it looks good like that. You should wear it down more often."

Shepard gave him a look of utter confusion. "It's regs. It has to be above my ears."

"Right. My mistake." He stood and stretched. "You know what, I think I will find that bed. Ma'am."

"Night, lieutenant."

/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\

Shepard wasn't asleep more than an hour before the taste of ashes filled her mouth and the ominous blaring of fog horns startled her from her dreams. Her head was pounding.

She stared up at the cracks in the hab roof, children of the crash that brought this merchant's ship to rest in Zhu's Hope. _I can't keep doing this. Maybe Protheans didn't rest, but I sure as hell need to._

Her bed was little more than a couple of blankets and a pillow on the floor in her ad hoc command center. Slowly, working on the cricks in her muscles, she sat up and put her face in her hands, trying to rub some life back into it. _I would positively kill for a cup of hot chocolate. Preferably with a sedative crushed up in it._

But she had to be awake and driving, possibly fighting, certainly commanding, in less than four hours. Shepard found her feet and made her way to the module where most of her ground team was bunking. Carefully, she perched on the edge of Liara's cot and gave the asari's shoulder a shake. "Liara."

She rolled over and made a snrking, sleepy sound. Shepard shook harder. "Liara."

"Ugh." She blinked awake, rubbing at her eyes. They kept their voices hushed for the sake of the others in the room. "Shepard? What is it?"

"I can't sleep," Shepard hissed.

"I can see that." Liara sat up a bit on her elbows. "And so I can't either, it seems. Why are you here?"

Shepard felt a twinge of guilt, but pressed on in desperation. "You said you had some kind of asari mind-control thing that would help."

"I said I knew a technique to join our minds that might help you process the vision from the beacon." Liara was torn between offense and amusement. "It's not 'mind-control'. The beacon is keeping you awake?"

"Bad dreams. The Protheans' war against the reapers, fifty thousand years ago."

The asari struggled against a yawn. "And you want to do this _now_?"

Shepard closed her eyes. "Liara, I can't do my job if I can't rest. If there's anything-"

"Shh." Liara sat up further, until she was cross-legged on the cot. "I'll do what I can. Give me your hands and try to relax."

Shepard tried to do as she asked, but it was difficult, not knowing what was about to happen, and certain that at least a part of her was going to regret granting such personal access. Liara's hands gripped hers warmly, not too tight, not so loose that shaking free would be simple. "I am going to join my consciousness to yours. We will be, for a time, of one mind, in the same place."

Her voice got slower, almost hypnotic. "There are threads of commonality, shared experience, belief, life, between all thinking creatures. They mark us and they bind us. Let go your body and reach for them with me now."

Liara's hands tightened on hers, causing her eyes to fly wide. Liara's once-blue eyes showed only solid black. She would have struggled, but she could already feel herself slipping under, like a drug, heavy like a blanket dragged over her mind. Liara smiled. "Embrace eternity!"

There was a sensation of falling, and then Shepard found herself standing in a great arching hall of wood, with warm and gentle sunlight trickling down from clerestory windows. Motes of dust danced in the beams. Four long corridors, lined with doors of various shapes and sizes, extended in cardinal directions from this central chamber. After a startled second, she noticed Liara standing beside her, gazing at the ceiling.

She was dressed not in the Alliance armor Shepard scrounged for her after she came aboard, nor the lab coat she favored while out of danger, but in a long, form-fitting gown of red and white with an elegance that seemed to transcend species. Her hands were folded on her stomach. "This is… quite interesting."

Shepard craned her neck. "Where are we?"

"This is your mind, as you've chosen to present it to me." Liara glanced at her, and burst out laughing.

"What?" She glanced down, and only then realized she was dressed in full body armor, breather helmet included. Chagrined, she reached up and raised the polycarbonate mask. "I guess it's a bit… out of place."

"I'm not going to bite, you know."

"I'm just not… entirely comfortable with this." She took a few heavy steps forward, still taking in the scenery. "I didn't chose this."

"I never said the choice was conscious." Liara clasped her hands behind her back. "The vision is somewhere inside this building. You need to take us to it."

"I don't know where it is."

"Yes, you do." Liara was patient. "Try to think about it without thinking about it, like glancing out of the corner of your eye."

Shepard shut her eyes a moment. "East. I think."

They set out down the corridor. Some of the doors were almost vault-like, thick steel guarded by thicker locks, or even chains in one case. Liara grew curious, extending her hand towards one example- only to quickly draw it back as her fingers received a nasty shock. She made a sound of irritation.

Shepard only smiled, without humor. "I agreed to let you take a look at the vision. That doesn't mean free reign to rummage around."

"You seem to have a great many secrets, Commander."

"That's what you get for a career in spec ops." She paused in front of an unassuming door, scarcely taller than herself, and marked all over with carvings. "I think this is it."

It opened readily at her touch, no locks or keys to bind it, and they stepped into a low-beamed room lined with display cases, cabinets, and flat drawers. Each was neatly labeled- Benezia, Saren, Therum, geth, and so on.

"You seem to have a very ordered mind."

"Disciplined, more like. No choice. It's the only way to deal with it."

Liara let that comment pass and opened a drawer at random. "I would have expected terminals, or perhaps a collection of datapads. This is almost charming in its antiquity."

"I have a grudging relationship with technology." Shepard was searching along the cabinets. She could sense the vision in this room, but not see it. "It agrees to work and I agree not to kick at it too hard when it's slow."

Liara chuckled. Shepard scarcely heard it. Her fingers trailed over the wood until they found a small catch. The surface of a cabinet sprang open on hinges, revealing a small black box with no visible lid or seal. "Here we are."

The asari archaeologist peered over her shoulder. "You know, since we came here to see this, it would be simpler if you hadn't locked it up."

"These barriers aren't for you." She lifted it out of its case, turning it over in her hands, looking for any sort of opening. "They're for me."

"Small wonder it's been troubling your sleep."

"Tell me something I don't know."

Liara continued to hover as Shepard examined the box. "You know, this whole place only exists in your mind. If you want to get rid of the box, all you require is the will to do so."

"It's not that easy." Shepard shook her head, disgusted with herself. "I mean it is that easy, but it's not that easy, see?"

"…no."

"To hell with this." She hefted the box in her hand and threw it against the wall.

It shattered into hundreds of black shards.

_The planet was on fire. Orange rimmed the horizon in all directions, not the cheerful glow of sunrise, but from the buildings and people burning under the onslaught of cherry-red reaper beams. Dead or dying Protheans lay in heaps around them. The air was choked with their smoke. There were no shoes upon her feet, no gun in her hand, just scraps of clothing to cover her. Her head felt strangely heavy, though from the oppressive heat of the flames or the darkness of this hour she could not say._

_As always, she started walking, and then jogging, and then running, trying to escape the onslaught of the machines, the madness of watching her people destroyed, the insanity of knowing what she saw here was repeated on a thousand other worlds across the plane of the galaxy. _

_And all around her, as she ran, the incessant screaming of a dying land, the laments of the Protheans mingled with the tearing of the land contorted with the screeching of their buildings as they collapsed into the earth. _

_Liara stood amidst the chaos, still wearing that red dress, her eyes wide as she beheld the destruction. _

_Shepard turned. "What are you waiting for? This is the end, we must go!"_

_The asari turned her gaze on the human. "Shepard, do you know where you are?"_

"_They are coming." Shepard shuffled back a few steps, grabbing at Liara's hand, trying to tug her along. "Can't you hear the screams?"_

"_All this happened long ago," she replied calmly, closing her hand over Shepard's. "Another age, another people, a different world."_

"_What are you talking about?" Shepard was flabbergasted, and afraid. "The reapers are here. Right now. If we don't move, we die."_

"_This is not your memory." Liara took a step towards her, still holding her hand. "This belongs to the Prothean people, who were long dead before you and I were ever born."_

"_I…" It couldn't be right, this felt too real, she could feel the war in her bones, but still… Shepard hesitated._

_Liara pressed the advantage. "You are human, an officer of the Systems Alliance. A soldier would never shirk her duty by fleeing. You've never seen any of these people, any of these cities, in your life. Think, Shepard."_

_Her glance took in the carnage, and she drew a shaky breath. "I should be defending them."_

"_They were dust before you were born," she reiterated, softly, cadenced. "This memory is their gift to you, to enable the defense of those who are now living. Use it. Do not allow it to rule you."_

"_It's a… memory."_

"_From the beacon on Eden Prime."_

_Shepard's hand went to her hair, remembering. "I hit my head. I was out for fifteen hours."_

"_Yes."_

"_We're… on Feros," she said slowly. The scene was diminishing in her sight, still horrific, but less real, more like a picture in an old book. "Fighting… geth, not reapers."_

"_Not reapers," Liara affirmed. "Not yet."_

_Shepard closed her eyes. _

When she opened them, she was back in the twilight of the hab, seated on the edge of Liara's cot, her breath rapid and loud. Liara still clutched her hands. Her eyes were blue again, and full of concern. "I had no idea."

A quick glance at the holo on the wall showed less than a minute had passed in real time. Her gaze flicked back to Liara's face.

"I think," Liara whispered, squeezing her hands, "That is quite enough for one evening."

"Liara-"

"We can talk about it later. Now, sleep." She stood, pushing Shepard down onto the cot. "Goddess knows you've earned it."

Shepard didn't even have time to protest before her eyes slid shut and exhaustion took her.


	25. Chapter 25

The road was rougher than expected.

Nathaly Shepard resisted the impulse to put the tip of her tongue between her teeth, an act of concentration, because as hard as the Mako was jouncing, it was a good way to sever it. The Mako wasn't responsive even at the best of times. Now, it was like trying to paddle a rowboat through a maelstrom.

Tali winced beside her as they navigated another boulder-sized chunk of fallen concrete, squeezing between it and the hundred meter drop off the skyway road stretching out across the valley. The versatile tank could probably survive that kind of fall, but the _Normandy _would never be able to extract it. And Shepard wasn't prepared to wager the odds of survival for its fragile organic cargo if the Mako happened to land on its roof. The stabilizers were supposed to prevent that dangerous crush zone from ever making contact with the ground.

On Tali's far side sat Liara. Shepard hadn't said more than hello since waking. She was aware Liara had done her a service, for which she should be grateful, and also that it was at her own request, but all she felt was icky. Trespassed, even. She liked her walls and her boundaries.

It reminded her of the aftermath of Elysium, in some odd way. The colonists there were thankful to be alive. Yet the ashes of their city were scarcely cool when they started asking, diplomatically, charitably, carefully, when the Alliance forces might be leaving. Because despite the necessity of intervention, this was still their home, and they were still armed soldiers tromping all over it, an invasion of a different kind and an unwelcome reminder.

Shepard stole another glance at Liara, who was passively examining the instrumentation. This wasn't between a colony and a navy. This was personal. It would be less straightforward.

She cleared her throat. "Anything over the radio yet?"

"Nothing." Liara adjusted a dial on the haptic interface.

Garrus reasoned, "Saren is probably disallowing local transmissions. Cutting off communication is essential to containing any surviving colonists."

Shepard snorted. "Saren isn't interested in survivors. He proved that on Eden Prime."

"Not quite," Tali said. It sounded as if she'd been thinking about this awhile. "His goal on Eden Prime was to copy the information stored in the beacon. He killed anyone who got in his way. That's not the same as wanting to destroy the colonists."

"You could be right. Anderson didn't think so, but he thought a lot of things. The situation is proving more complicated." Shepard sighed, and accelerated. "Mind the gap."

Garrus peered around the gun. "What?"

Shepard timed the retrorocket burst to coincide with the first pair of wheels rolling out onto thin air. There was a loud thunk from the back. The Mako jolted a good six meters into the air, maintaining most of its forward momentum, and sailed over a section of road that had fallen to ground level. Shepard felt more of the road give way as the rear of the vehicle landed heavily on the far edge, but they were away from the gap before it could become a problem.

Garrus rubbed his bruised forehead. "A little warning, next time?"

"I thought I did give a little warning."

"Maybe a little more than that."

"We've got hostiles," Liara said urgently, leaning over the ladar.

Shepard scanned the road ahead. "Two heavies and a bunch of cannon fodder behind barricades. Garrus?"

"On the heavies." He swung the Mako's main cannon into position and fired a salvo.

The armatures were too close to the barricades for Shepard to run them down. "See if you can drive the heavies back. I'm going to try to flank them."

The skyway was divided into two levels by a forty-five degree ramp- a walk in the park for the Mako. They accelerated up the ramp and took a hard left, coming at the geth from the side. The armatures reeled on the spot, trying to adjust, but their four heavy legs were designed for bracing rather than rapid mobility. Shepard increased their speed even more, running over the troopers in one pass, and circling around behind the armatures before they could react.

"I need more room!" Garrus called, trying to maneuver their gun into range.

"Roger." The Mako sped off. Shepard learned the hard way the Mako's shields couldn't hold long against true geth artillery, and so the key was to keep moving. The question was whether Garrus could keep up.

The cabin shuddered as the main gun fired off a heavy round. One of the blips on their ladar projection shivered and died. Garrus let out a whoop from the back.

Then a rocket exploded, right on their rear, throwing everyone forward as the shields went down.

Shepard cursed and swerved. Garrus held his hand down on the artillery trigger, raining relatively low-caliber shots into the armature. Liara's hands flew over the instruments. Tali crowded next to her, likewise reaching for the dials, and the two women's frantic arguing set Shepard's teeth on edge.

"I know perfectly well how to use a long range scanner!"

"You need to compensate for the inanimate-"

"Enough!" Shepard yelled, as another rocket cratered not two meters from their starboard flank, nearly upsetting the tank. She drove behind a buckled section of road to provide some small cover. "Garrus-"

"I got it." He swiveled the gun, and let off another heavy round. There was a muffled explosion. "Confirming target down."

Sudden quiet descended on the cabin. Shepard's grip went slack on the controls, and she leaned back, running her hand over her face. "Okay. Good work. Let's see what we can do about getting those shields back up."

Tali's helmet turned towards Liara for a moment, in what Shepard was certain was a glare, before the quarian leaned forward to run a diagnostic.

The archaeologist, for her part, continued to fiddle with the Mako's comm link. She tilted her head. "Shepard, I think I might have something."

"Put it up on the speaker."

The familiar spit and hiss of a half-scrambled radio frequency filled the air. "…ony. Next wave… shield's impenetrable, need to tr… if anyone is sti… ome."

Shepard frowned. "It's incredibly garbled. Can you get a fix on it?"

"I believe so." Liara tapped away at the console. "Yes, it's coming from the other end of the skyway."

Tali also glanced up. "Shields coming back online. The generator can't take many more hits like that without repairs."

"Roger that." Shepard put her foot to the accelerator and eased out of cover. "Garrus?"

There came the familiar sound of the main gun recycling as it cooled back into operational range. "We're go. Let's find these people."

"And hope they're not with Saren."

/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\

Kaidan Alenko leaned his assault rifle against the metal crate forming his section of the Zhu's Hope barricade, and massaged his forehead. Not enough sleep with one long day followed by another and another was a terrific headache recipe. The pills tamped it down to a dull ache, but in the quiet moments between attacks or other crises, it remained a distraction.

Neither the pace nor the severity of the geth assaults increased in the eight hours since Shepard left, early that morning. Alenko took that to mean the Mako squad had yet to break through the other side. Surely, they would provoke some kind of reaction from Saren's forces.

Gunnery Chief Williams plopped down beside him, stowing her own rifle and digging through her pockets for some of Davin's jerky. "You look worried, L.T."

The infantrywoman was in her element on Feros. She seemed to almost revel in the constant apprehension, the uncertainty, and frequent firefights. It wasn't that Alenko couldn't cope- he'd been a marine for ten years, not all of them peaceful- but he didn't _enjoy _this kind of dragging, deadly uncertainty. "There's a lot riding on this. Saren could have found anything on this planet, and all these people are just trying to get their home back."

"They will." Williams tore off another piece of jerky with her teeth, chewed and swallowed. "The Commader'll get through."

"I'm not worried about that." He looked around and lowered his voice. "Look, these colonists act… weird, right? There's something going on here we don't understand and it could bite us in the ass."

She spared the colonists an uneasy glance. "I know what you mean. There's something off about this place."

"Sometimes it's like they know the geth are coming before we have any warning. I've seen some of them run to reinforce the back door before the request comes over the comm. It's kind of freaking me out."

"Feels like we're in a B-grade horror flick and don't realize it yet." Williams offered him a grim half-smile. "At least they're on our side?"

Alenko was still working down his chain of thought. "Something caused this. Maybe it's not unrelated to why Saren is here."

"We've asked them a half a jillion times if they found anything for ExoGeni. The answer's always no."

"Which is precisely what you'd say if you were trying to hide or protect something important."

Williams rolled her eyes. "Permission to speak freely, sir?"

"Does anything ever stop you?"

"This is conspiracy-theory level bullshit. Everyone in Zhu's Hope says they stayed for a little peace and serenity. Well, maybe they found it. Maybe there's nothing supernatural going on at all."

"Who said anything about supernatural, Chief? Everything has a rational explanation." Alenko shook his head and picked up his rifle, fiddling with the heat sink. Lately it was taking longer to cool than expected and he was growing concerned that the cooling elements were wearing out. "Anyway, Shepard was worried about it."

Williams gave him a penetrating look. "Does this have something to do with the orders she gave you right before she left?"

Shepard had pulled him aside briefly before addressing the marines left behind at Zhu's Hope. _I've left instructions with Pressly to protect the ship at all costs. The Normandy's tech makes it one of the most valuable assets in the Alliance. I'm not letting it fall into Saren's hands. We don't know what he found that makes this place so important, but from what it's done here already I know it's big, and I'm not going to risk the war for the sake of a single battle if he decides to use it against us._

_If Pressly gives the order, you take the ground team and you make for the ship. I don't care if it means leaving the colonists. I don't care if I'm not back. Nobody is more important than defeating Saren. Do you understand?_

_I don't want arguments. If you can't follow an order, I'll find a lieutenant who will._

_Good. Until then, you hold this base. One way or another, this'll be over in a few days at most. I'll see you then._

Aloud, Alenko said, "If she wanted you to hear those orders, I imagine she would have addressed the entire crew."

Williams made a sound of pure exasperation and turned her attention back to her snack. In spite of everything, he couldn't help being amused by her reaction. She was a tremendous, if good-natured gossip and she hated being kept from a juicy bit of scuttlebutt. _Shepard is right about that. Ash is a good soldier, but not nearly ready for command._

Taking out a pocket knife, he popped open the side of the grip with a hiss of air and examined the heat sink. The tiny refrigerated coils lining the column of wires coming down from the barrel frosted over instantly on exposure to the warm atmosphere. Maybe that was all there was to it- Feros was a bakehouse, and it was cutting into the weapon's efficiency. He couldn't see any parts broken or worn.

"You spend more time looking at that thing than firing it." Urdnot Wrex snorted his amusement and joined the two marines against the barricade. "If I didn't know better, I'd say you were a soft-bellied scientist, not a soldier."

"Yeah, I could tell you hated it when I fixed the action on your shotgun a few days ago."

Williams grinned. "Our L.T. isn't ever content with knowing something works. He always has to find out how and why."

He raised an eyebrow at her. "If you ask me, there are a few people around here who could do with a little more thoughtfulness. Or was it some other cocky NCO who almost got her hand blown off removing a geth memory core after the last attack?"

"I'd seen Tali do it a hundred times," she grumbled, but conceded the point.

Finding nothing amiss, Alenko replaced the cover and screwed down the bolt with the tip of the knife, and pressed the button to vent and seal the cooling chamber. It didn't require a hard vacuum, but low-pressure, clean, dry air significantly improved operation.

Without warning, a group of four colonists stood and started running towards the rear barricade, past Alenko's position. His brow furrowed.

Wrex sniffed at the air. "Synthetic goop, that stuff that spills out of the flashlight heads. Fresh."

Gunfire sounded from the back door into the colony. Alenko lurched to his feet and glanced at Williams. "Hold position here in case they circle around."

"Aye aye, sir." She set her gun over the top of the barricade as her commanding officer, once more, ran tiredly towards the fight to deal with the geth.

/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\

The radio chatter was increasing as they drew near the far end of the bridge. "…anyone out there… aughter miss… ExoGeni… synthe… headed south, what do they… hello?"

"Sounds like they're trapped," Garrus said.

Shepard grunted. "Saren hasn't gotten to them yet."

"There's still hope." Liara's smile brought a bit of sunshine to the cabin. She had that way about her, a talent for infecting optimism.

Shepard, however, was highly inoculated. "Maybe. There's no indication of numbers. We've only heard the one voice."

The woman on the comm was sending incessantly, with hardly a break in transmission that was not the result of interference.

Tali had a different theory. "One person with a transmitter doesn't raise this kind of alarm. She would be too easy to find."

Shepard blew a stray lock of hair off her face. "Most colonists aren't that versed in counter-insurgency. But you could be right."

Garrus raised his eyes to the road. "There. A door, up ahead. It's stuck open."

The Mako arrowed towards the garage, glad to be back in cover. The squad encountered additional resistance along the skyway, enough to set them all on edge, and they'd caught a glimpse of the silvery geth ship hanging like a wasp off the side of the colony. Shepard could only imagine what the hallways and homes must look like now, entirely overrun by the platoons of geth aboard that massive vessel.

_Just like Elysium. _Shepard and her companion passed through the relay on the heels of the Batarian mercenaries they were tracking. She still recalled the drop shuttles, what looked like endless numbers of every faceless merc, pirate, separatist, terrorist, or just plain opportunist the ragtag attackers could drum up. The Feros colony was hardly the size of Illyria, but the feeling was the same.

They drove through the door. Two ramps met them, one leading up, deeper into the colony, while the other led down, into the garage proper. Burns on the ground told her this was where they kept their shuttles when they weren't in use flying to Zhu's Hope.

Tali leaned forward, crowding Liara. "We have movement to the left."

Shepard's attention snapped to the window. Down the ramp, figures in hard suits were scrambling towards makeshift barricades. "Fantastic. Now if we can just avoid being shot by the people we're trying to save, it'll be a good day."

She checked her shields and cautiously opened the Mako's driver-side hatch, raising her hands as she hopped out of the vehicle. "I'm Commander Shepard with the Alliance! I've here to assist you!"

The rifle barrels aimed in their direction wavered slightly. She pressed her advantage. "I need to talk to the person in charge. Permission to enter?"

They glanced at each other.

"Slowly," one called. "Keep your hands where I can see them."

Shepard took a step forward, then another. "My squad?"

The self-indicated leader of the guard jerked his head in an affirmative. Shepard looked over his shoulder. "Move out. Careful. We don't want to make our friends here jumpy."

The man's eyes widened under his helmet as her team climbed out of the Mako. "What the hell? The Alliance is taking on aliens now?"

"Special consultants," Shepard supplied quickly. "This Dr. T'Soni, a Prothean expert, Tali'Zorah, whose expertise lies with geth technology, and Detective Vakarian from Citadel Security. We're hunting the leader of these synthetics, Saren."

"Saren." The man spat. His squad relaxed a fraction. "Big guy? Turian? Metal on his face?"

"That's him. Do you know where he is?"

He shook his head. "We haven't seen him since the start of the invasion. You better come inside."

They sauntered down the ramp into a small make-shift encampment. Emergency generators powered lighting, along with a handful of terminals and a radio. About a third of the twenty-odd people present were wearing hard suits. The rest were in civilian gear, heavily slanted towards lab tunics and rumpled business suits. "Who are you?"

The man- a nametag on his breast read R. Kelm- let out a sigh. "What's left of ExoGeni's security team. Not many of us made it out when they raided the lab. Honestly, ma'am, physical security isn't our thing. We were focused on loss prevention and cyber threats."

"Understood." She glanced around. "And the others? These are scientists from the labs?"

He snorted. "And bureaucrats. You'll want to talk to Jeong. He's the highest ranking ExoGeni goon to make it out."

"Right." She started to walk off, but Kelm grabbed her arm.

"Ma'am, Jeong might be in charge, nominally, but he's an auditor from corporate. He doesn't understand this place like we do. And you can be damned sure all he's looking out for is the company. You want real help? Talk to Dr. Baynham." He jerked his head towards the comm systems.

She nodded, wryly. "Thanks for the insight. I'll keep it in mind."

The woman seated in front of the radio was so fixated on her work that she didn't hear them approach. "This is Juliana Baynham. Is anyone alive out there? We need assistance. My daughter is missing. The shield around ExoGeni headquarters is impenetrable. We must regroup against the synthetics."

Shepard gently lay a hand over Baynham's, where it rested on the frequency dial. "Doctor?"

The woman glanced up, startled. She was at the far end of middle age, though her close-cut layered black hair and lively blue eyes defied her years. She must have been a great beauty in her youth. "Oh, finally, someone heard my transmission."

"No." Shepard shook her head. "There's a jamming signal blanketing this whole area. We couldn't even get garble until we got close."

Confusion twisted her features. "Then how…"

"We landed at Zhu's Hope a week ago. We've been fighting our way here."

Her eyes swept the small squad. Disappointment registered. "There are only four of you."

"The hostiles have deployed anti-aircraft field artillery. I couldn't bring my ship any closer. But I don't think we're going to need it."

Juliana opened her mouth to reply, but at that moment an angry Asian man, balding and short of stature, stormed their meeting. "What is the Alliance doing here? This is an internal company matter. I must ask you to leave at once."

"Ethan!" Juliana exclaimed, shocked.

Shepard sized him up. "I have no intention of going anywhere. This colony is under assault and it's my job to defend it."

"On whose authority?" he sneered. "The Alliance knows better than to trespass on its citizens' private property. There are laws against this sort of thing."

The commander removed her pistol from her belt and examined it, idly, leaning back against the table holding the communications gear. "Then I guess it's good I'm investigating this matter on the behalf of the Galactic Council, and not the Systems Alliance." She gave him a shark's smile. "Or are you trying to tell me that ExoGeni refuses to respect even spectre authority?"

"You're not a spectre." Jeong was taken aback.

"Look at her, Ethan." Juliana was exasperated. "This is the commander from Eden Prime. You watch the news."

"Commander Shepard." She held out her hand.

He shook it, limply, all the wind snatched from his sails. Feebly, he made a final attempt at dissuasion. "Commander, I really must ask you to leave. The situation is under-"

"Control? Don't make me laugh." She turned her attention back to Juliana. "Give me the rundown."

"I can't tell you much about the colony. We haven't heard from them since we got here. But the geth overran our labs. They drove everyone out, killed anyone who wasn't quick enough. Every once in awhile a scouting party tries to break in, but we've driven them off every time."

"That's odd." Shepard frowned. "Zhu's Hope is getting attacks almost hourly. Why care so much about those colonists, but leave you alone?"

"Zhu's Hope is still alive?" Juliana brightened momentarily. "We had no idea, we've been so cut off. That is wonderful news."

Jeong's lips thinned. "Yes. We have quite a tidy investment in this little colony. But clearly these… attacks aren't within our corporate liability."

Juliana's eyes cut to the auditor with sudden steel. "You said they were all dead."

"I said they were probably all dead." He waved his hands wildly in frustration, which was the point Shepard noticed he was clutching a pistol. With the safety disengaged. "You remember what the first wave was like. Who survives that?"

Shepard stepped smartly to the side, out of Jeong's frontal cone. "I suggest you put that weapon away unless you're prepared to fire it."

He looked down as if seeing it for the first time, and with some embarrassment stuffed it into the hem of his trousers. Garrus coughed, reached over, and flipped on the safety. Jeong reddened. "The best thing we can do is wait for corporate reinforcements to arrive."

Juliana snorted. Jeong's blush deepened. "They're bound to show up sooner or later."

"Or they've written the whole lot of you off as a loss," Garrus said dryly.

"They'd never leave th-" Jeong cleared his throat. "I mean, ExoGeni values all its assets.

Shepard's interest sharpened. "Any idea why the geth chose to attack Feros?"

"None," Juliana said immediately. "We've been here for four years. In that time, we've barely found enough tech to fill a broom closet, and most of it isn't new. Resources are our biggest obstacle."

"There's nothing here that would justify an attack," Jeong agreed. "There's barely enough here to justify a colony."

"Please try to think. It's critical to stopping the attacks in the Traverse."

Juliana pursed her lips. "Well, there is this. Most of the geth we've spotted have been heading south."

Understanding dawned. "Towards Zhu's Hope."

Juliana nodded. "I have no idea what they're searching for, but whatever it is…"

"They think the spaceport is hiding it." Shepard rubbed her eyes. "That confirms one of my theories, anyway. Thank you."

It was impossible to avoid noticing that Jeong was looking daggers at Juliana. He swallowed and attempted to school his expression as Shepard's gaze pierced him. "I can't wait for the home office to get me the hell off this rock."

Shepard switched tactics. "Are we getting close to their base?"

"They've holed up in ExoGeni HQ," Juliana confirmed. "It's just a little further up the skyway. Nothing much to it. There's a few labs, and a bunch of offices, but it's built like the rest of this ruin- all tunnels and staircases."

Jeong was all but snarling at this point. "Try to minimize damage, Commander. This is ExoGeni property."

She rolled her eyes and lied through her teeth. "Copy that."

"And I must remind you that ExoGeni will not be held responsible for any injuries sustained during your illegal entry to our facility."

She just stared. He swallowed again.

"Right." Shepard turned to go. "Let's get back to the Mako and see what we can get from HQ."

Juliana grabbed her arm. "Commander Shepard, there is one more thing. My daughter- Lizbeth- she's still trapped up at headquarters. I've been trying to contact her over the radio, but that shield they've put up is impenetrable."

"Lizbeth? We met a colonist at Zhu's Hope, Ian Newstead, who mentioned a Lizbeth."

"She spent a lot of time over at the port." Juliana was pleading. "Please, try to find her. She's alive. I just know it."

"There's no need for the Commander to go poking around," Jeong cut in. "We can conduct a full accounting of our casualties after the geth are cleared out."

"I'm not interested in your company secrets," Shepard exploded, out of patience with his corporate bull. "I'm here to find out what Saren wants and drive off his machines. That's it. Get on board or get out of my way."

Jeong opened his mouth. Shepard turned her glare up a notch. He mumbled and looked away. "Someone's got to look out for ExoGeni's interests."

Shepard allowed that to pass. To Juliana, more gently, she said, "I'll keep an eye out for your daughter. But I gotta tell you, things look bad out there."

"Thank you. That's all I can ask."

/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\

Staff Lieutenant Alenko was wolfing down a slapped-together sandwich while standing in what passed for a kitchen in the Zhu's Hope hab. Since the arrival of the marines, they were trying to rotate people off the barricades every six hours, to keep everyone sharp, but as the commanding officer in lieu of Shepard he was lucky if he got ten minutes before something called him back. _No wonder she made such little progress finding Saren on this rock._

There was a port overlooking the shipping yard. Most of the crates had been repurposed as barriers against the geth, lending the yard a rather forlorn look. A young woman stood listlessly at the controls for the massive crane that in better days hauled large containers of supplies across the spaceport. Alenko recognized her as Hana Murakami. Other than the salarian merchant, she was the only survivor of the wreck of the _Borealis _that created this habitat. Some had died in the accident, but more fell to the slow attrition of the geth invasion.

She spent most of her time staring into space with her hands slack over the crane's control terminal. It made a certain amount of sense. To the merchant, it was only a chartered vessel and crew. Murakami might have served on her, with those same people, for years, and the crash wasn't so long ago. She didn't fit in here, and had no means to leave.

Alenko swallowed the last of the sandwich with a long drink of water, and decided he wouldn't be too hard to find in the yard. The least he could do was make sure she was getting along. With everything else that was happening, it would be easy to overlook one colonist who wasn't taking care of herself.

Murakami turned to him with a thousand-yard stare. Her dark eyes were unfocused behind a black fringe of bangs. She blinked, once, glacially.

"Hi," he said, for lack of anything else to say.

Another blink. Alenko turned towards the console, continuing bravely despite Murakami's spookiness. "Working on the crane? There's not much cargo now."

"I'm running a diagnostic," she said softly, devoid of any inflection.

He peered at the holographic screen. She shifted uncomfortably, as if to hide it, and out of politeness he looked away. "Were you a tech on the ship?"

"I was the navigator."

"That takes a lot of training. Why stay here after the crash?"

Her face clouded over, confused, but it was gone so quickly Alenko wasn't certain he'd seen it at all. Smoothly, and just as flatly, she said, "It's peaceful here."

His eyes cut back towards the barricades. "Peaceful."

"There's something about this colony. I can't-" Her tone grew agitated, her hands fidgeting with the controls. "I can't- describe it. It's kind of like…"

Murakami's face twisted, conflicted, but then she shut her eyes a moment. By the time she opened them again, her demeanor was placid once more, resuming that quiet, empty gaze. "I can't explain it. You should ask Fai Dan."

"A lot of people here seem happy to let Fai Dan speak for them."

All that met that statement was another slow blink. Alenko rubbed his nose. "Look, I just came out here to make sure you're ok. It seems like you never leave this terminal, not even to eat or sleep."

She turned back to the console. "My needs are met."

Murakami was almost catatonic in her responses, shutting down after each attempt at conversation, answering the question and nothing more. Alenko gave up. He didn't want to make her uncomfortable. "Alright. Just don't feel like you have to stay out here if you don't want to."

He turned back towards the barricades, intending to check in, when something caught his eye.

The crane was left in place after its final use, when they finished clearing out the last of the cargo boxes. To Alenko's surprise, it was not dangling over the yard, but rather over the shipwreck-turned-hab. His eyes traced down the boom until he identified the module. The crease in his brow deepened.

"What are you looking at?" Murakami asked suddenly. There was nothing laconic about her now.

He glanced at her over her shoulder. The intensity, and suddenness, of her focus was unsettling. "You were using the crane to… what, settle the ship?"

"We use the crane for a lot of things," she said sharply.

_Why do it after the geth arrived? _he thought, and started to ask, but something in Murakami's look made him think better of it. He was startled to find his hand drifting towards his pistol and stopped himself with a conscious effort. "I see."

"I need to get back to work." The same note of near-hostility played through her words. "Fai Dan wants a report on-"

Her mouth snapped shut, chagrined. His eyes narrowed. "A report on what?"

Pain flashed across her face, making her eyes fly wide. She turned back to the terminal and began to enter commands almost frantically. "I need to get back to work!"

"Ok, ok." He held up both his hands and took a step back. That seemed to calm her. _What the hell happened to these people?_

He could feel her gaze piercing him all the way back to the barricade. However, as soon as he was out of her line of sight, he ducked back inside the hab. It wasn't a complicated ship, just a single deck with a number of modular bays hanging off her spine. It didn't take long to confirm his suspicion. Though from the outside it looked like part of the ship, there was no way to access the module under the crane from inside the structure. It was almost as though it was levered into place as an afterthought. Why?

To hide something, naturally. Alenko frowned. What were the colonists keeping inside that module? What was so awful that they'd stationed one of their own to guard it? Maybe the same thing that had wave after wave of geth attacking Zhu's hope.

Quietly, he buried the thought. Though he was damned if he understood it, every instinct in him demanded he defend himself when Murakami noticed his interest in the module. He didn't rely on his gut feeling like the commander, but on the rare occasion when it put in an appearance, it was seldom mistaken.

For the first time since they arrived on Feros he was actually worried. Nobody served so long in the Alliance without growing comfortable with the hazards of combat, but this was something else entirely, something he didn't understand. Mentioning it could endanger the ground crew in unpredictable and unacceptable ways.

_Best to keep it quiet for now. _He bit his lip, and gave the wall with its conspicuously absent hatch one final glance. _Just until Shepard gets back. She'll know what to do._

/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\

They drove up the skyway until they found a section of retrofit concrete block wall that had caved under the geth onslaught, just wide enough to admit a person. The gentle vibration of the Mako shuddered and died as Shepard powered down the vehicle. It was a calculated risk; a full power-up sequence took the better part of fifteen minutes. They needed the tank to return to Zhu's Hope in a secure and timely fashion. She wasn't going to make it easy to remove. As a precaution, she parked out of line of sight of the breach, to better protect the Mako. At the worst only light geth units would be able to pursue them through the hole, a small enough force to hold off indefinitely at a bottleneck.

The four passengers disembarked without much fanfare, weapons readied, and disappeared into the gap.

Garrus blinked in the low light. "Looks like ExoGeni blocked off part of the road to make their building."

"Explains why that wall gave out so easily." Shepard continued to marvel at how well-preserved the site was relative to its age.

Liara craned her neck, examining the entirely Prothean ceiling. "They were building an empire for eternity. No empire dreams it will ever fall. Still, they have an advantage here- other areas of Feros with a more destructive climate are likely less well-preserved."

"Makes you wonder what the galaxy would look like if any of them survived into this cycle." The road was in no better condition here than further back along the skyway. Shepard picked her way around a jagged tear, where the road had buckled and lifted a good two meters above the other half.

"Undoubtedly, we would have benefitted from their experience. If just a few had lived... They could tell us so much about the reapers, more than one broken vision."

Shepard's skin crawled at Liara's casual mention of the vision they shared. She took a breath to quell the reaction. It was done. There was no point in denying it.

The others seemed not to have noticed her faint revulsion. Garrus chuckled. "A witness to question. Wouldn't that be nice."

Tali, meanwhile, had crawled up above road level, some distance away from the group. "Shepard! You need to take a look at this."

"What is it?" Shepard made her way to the quarian, who was standing before a door, a real one and not an accidental hole in the wall, taking readings of a blue shield stretched across the frame. "More Prothean shielding?"

"No." Tali shook her head. "This is modern technology. Advanced, but ordinary. The barrier is quite strong. Maybe if we could use the Mako, the main cannon could breach it."

Shepard grimaced. "Not an option. We'll have to find another way in."

Garrus prodded the barrier. "Complete communications embargo, heavy-duty kinetic shielding... Saren really didn't want anyone watching what he's doing here."

Her smile grew teeth. "I like it. It means when we figure this out, it's going to hit him where it hurts."

"What about over here?" Liara was standing before a collapsed section of floor, looking down into the darkness.

Shepard crouched and craned her neck, peering into it. "That's a solid drop, and little cover. We won't be able to retreat quickly if there's a party of geth waiting."

"Nothing on the ladar," Tali reported, "Though it could be their damn jammers again."

Shepard strained her ears, but all she heard was the steady drip of water from a leaking pipe somewhere ahead. "Alright. Drop down, form up, and be on alert."

She took point, with Garrus not far behind, and Tali and Liara hanging back. Liara was still not entirely comfortable with military life, but Tali continued to surprise her with her resilience and adaptability. The quarian had explained that on the fleet, emergencies, often life-threatening ones, were not uncommon. It came with living on ancient second and third-hand ships. Shepard wondered what drove a civilization to live that way, century upon century, when there were other obvious solutions to their problems, but had not yet found a diplomatic way to ask, and liked Tali too well to be deliberately discourteous.

They made their way down the short hallway by the light of the main chamber that flowed down through the fallen floor. It led to a large interior room, the floor slick with leaking water, smelling faintly of mildew and a stronger, animalistic scent not unlike wet dog that Shepard struggled to place.

The second the squad cleared the hall, two pistol shots rang out in rapid succession. Shepard felt the air stir as one cleared her cheek by mere centimeters. Tali and Liara scattered. Garrus jumped to the side, clear of any further shots.

Shepard raised her rifle. It found only a shaking human woman half-hidden in the shadows of the room. The gun wavered in her hand. "Oh… oh god."

"Put it down. Now." Shepard's aim, in contrast, was quite steady.

She all but dropped it. The pistol clunked as it hit the hard floor. "Please, I'm just a scientist working for ExoGeni. Don't shoot."

The commander relaxed, lowering her gun, and sighed. "You can't just go shooting everything that moves. It's dangerous."

"I- I know. I'm sorry." She swallowed, her eyes straying to Shepard's hard suit insignia. "The Alliance finally sent help?"

"The Alliance didn't even know anything had happened. Your employers didn't see fit to inform us." She didn't bother to disguise her disdain for ExoGeni. "I'm Commander Shepard. I've been tracking the geth, and that led me to your colony."

Recognition dawned. "You're the one from Eden Prime."

"That's me, yeah. Who are you?"

"I'm Dr. Baynham, a researcher here. I stayed behind during the attack to try to reach the Alliance, but they dropped that damned shield. I've been stuck here ever since."

Liara's interest perked. "Juliana Baynham's daughter?"

"Yes. How did you-"

The asari smiled. "We met your mother, along with other survivors from this complex, just a little further down the skyway. You could probably reach them."

"Oh my god. I need to go."

She started moving towards the hallway, but Shepard stepped in front of her. "Not so fast. First I need some answers. And I doubt you're getting back up to road level without our help."

Lizbeth took a breath, composing herself. "Yes. Of course. I'll help however I can."

"The geth aren't targeting our colonies at random. They're looking for Prothean technology. Is there anything ExoGeni or the colonists discovered here, anything at all, that might attract attention?"

"No, nothing like that. We've barely found enough to keep the colony funded, much less anything extraordinary." But she looked away as she spoke, just for a second, a small twitch of evasion.

Shepard put that together with Jeong's slip of the tongue and applied a little pressure. "Lizbeth, I would not ask were it not beyond important. This stretches past the needs of one company or one colony or even one species."

Lizbeth bit her lip. Shepard took a step towards her. "You ever want to save the world? This is your chance."

The young woman took a breath and met Shepard's eyes steadily. "I'm sorry, Commander. We haven't found anything like that."

Shepard watched her a moment, then nodded. "Alright. What's the quickest way into the labs?"

"Through the door near the back. It's inside the shield so it's not blocked." Lizbeth pointed. Her hand scrabbled at her waist. "Here, take my ID badge. It should get you through any access point except the executive wing."

"Thanks." Shepard clipped it onto her utility belt. "Garrus, can you boost our friend here out of this hole?"

"I'm on it." He turned back towards the hall.

Tali made to follow. "I'll help."

Shepard jerked her head, affirmative. "Go."

Lizbeth allowed herself to be led away. "Watch out for varren. They're wild in the tunnels outside the complex proper."

Well, that explained the stench. Shepard leaned against the wall and rubbed her eyes.

"Tired?" Liara asked.

She shook her head. "Catching my breath, that's all."

Liara moved a little closer, tentative. "I was wondering if we might discuss the contents of the beacon. I have a few observations that may prove important."

Shepard scooted away a half-step without thinking. Her look when she realized it was at once abashed and defiant.

Liara closed her eyes briefly, collecting her thoughts. "You humans are so stubborn. Your minds are so independent, so resistant to melding with the shared experience that connects all life."

"I'd think it would be an advantage, having a mind resistant to invasion," Shepard replied thoughtlessly.

"I did not invade. No asari would ever abuse the grace of our goddess in such a fashion. I was invited."

"I know." Shepard ran her hand over her face. "I know, I'm sorry."

"What you see as a benefit, the asari, and those who have known us longer, would see as lonesome." Liara pursed her lips. "If I may be blunt, you are more defensive than even most humans. You despise allowing another person to perceive any supposed weakness, even when their only motive is to help you."

"I have my reasons," she said, rather stiffly.

"Undoubtedly. But you're intelligent enough to understand that such sharing can also be a strength." Liara shook her head. "But this is not what I wished to discuss. I think I have discovered why the beacon continues to trouble your mind."

Shepard's interest was piqued despite her discomfort. "I'm listening."

"It was supposed to be a message. A warning. But it's incomplete, maybe because the beacon was damaged, or maybe because it was intended for a wholly Prothean mind. In either case, you cannot comprehend the vision in its entirety. Critical portions are missing. That is why it will not leave you alone. It _wants _to be heard."

"You talk about it like it has a mind of its own."

"Not precisely. Prothean communication is known to be… strange. Even experts only have the crudest understanding of its principles."

"Rogue spectres, synthetic armies, and intelligent voicemail." Shepard shook her head. "I could do with a little less mystery."

"Then let's go find some answers," Garrus said, rejoining them with Tali close behind.

The door opened to Lizbeth's badge, just as she promised, and they found themselves in a side corridor leading to abandoned office space. Terminals sat shut down, offline when the power was cut, waiting patiently for their users to return. Datapads and office chairs lay upturned on the floor in an inch of stagnant water. Shepard glanced up and saw crude sprinklers bolted into Prothean concrete.

"The geth's gunfire must have set them off," Tali reasoned.

Garrus' fingers brushed over a scorch mark on the wall. "That, or flamethrowers."

A blackened human corpse lay at his feet, an ExoGeni employee who had not made it to safety. Liara blanched. "There is no excuse large enough in the universe for this."

Shepard glanced at the stairs. "Let's make it count. We don't leave until we know why Saren visited this place with his misery."

They were still looking around the office, weary and bewildered. Shepard's mouth settled into a grim line. "Listen to me. We are going to bring down this damned shield, uncover Saren's secret, and evict these sons of bitches with such finality that no synthetic will come within a hundred parsecs of this world so long as there is a single geth memory core left."

Tali straightened. Liara let out a breath, and nodded. Garrus turned to face the stairwell and raised his gun.

Then they heard a fifth voice, a deep growl, coming from the second level. "Stupid machine!"

There was a murmur of response, evidently unsatisfactory. "Dammit! Access encrypted files!"

Tali whirled. "That's not the geth!"

Shepard didn't waste breath replying. She ran for the stairs.

"No, I don't want to review protocol! Fucking Vis!"

"I'm sorry, I am unable to comply with your request," said a pleasantly, artificially smooth male voice.

"Give me access to your secure servers, or I will blast your virtual ass into actual dust," the first voice roared, the threat as heartfelt as it was absurd.

Shepard made it to the top of the stairs. A fully armored krogan, with his back turned to her, was shouting at a pink-lined VI, which was smiling vapidly in the face of the krogan's fury. "That request requires a level four security exemption. Please speak with your supervisor. If you have no further inquiries, please step aside. A queue is forming for use of this console."

She cursed all synthetics, everywhere, and started firing before he had even fully turned around. The rest of her squad joined her. The krogan went down like the half-ton of meat it was. His golden eyes stared blankly at Shepard's boots as she approached.

He had the same yellow skin and blackish-red crest as the krogan on Therum, the same as described by the colonists at Zhu's Hope when they spoke of the krogan squad that had attacked shortly before the _Normandy's_ arrival. She stared at the dead krogan, the spots on his neck like outsized freckles, the cheap fabrication of his armor, the way his fingers curled around his rifle even in death, and wondered. _What is the connection between Saren and the krogan? Is it just one clan, hence the similarity, or something more sinister?_

The VI chirped. "Welcome back, Dr. Baynham. May I remind you, the firing of weapons on company premises is strictly forbidden. Can I be of assistance?"

Her brow furrowed in confusion. Then she gave the badge at her belt a glance. Apparently, ID was all that was required to be authenticated. _Good grief. Even their security protocols are cheap as hell. _

She straightened, leaving the krogan at peace, and approached the VI. "What was the last user attempting to access?"

"He was attempting to learn more about the thorian," it replied pleasantly. "Unfortunately he did not have the required security permissions."

"Tell me about the thorian."

It paused and flickered for a moment. It would seem the back-up generator was running out of steam. "The thorian is a fascinating plant-based life form discovered running beneath most of the surface of Feros. It is dispersed along many neural nodes, the largest known concentration of which is beneath the spaceport at Zhu's Hope."

_Neural nodes? _Her heart sped up. She had a terrible sense of foreboding. "Why did he want to know about a giant plant?"

"The thorian obtains resources and accomplishes tasks, even those of a certain complexity, by emitting spores that infect and subvert animal life forms to its will," the VI explained, as placidly as if it were describing grass. "Before losing contact with the sensors at Zhu's Hope, it was believed over 85% of the colonists were affected. Your own work demonstrated the thorian is quite careful of its tools, allowing them to pantomime a normal existence when it requires no specific tasks."

Shocked silence greeted this pronouncement.

"Those bastards," Garrus said at last.

"How horrifying." Liara was aghast. "So all the colonists' strange behavior… it was because of this creature?"

Tali looked at Shepard. "Do you know what this means?"

"Yes." She sighed and leaned back on her heels. "Lizbeth Baynham lied to me. And I left our ground crew sitting on top of a time bomb."


	26. Chapter 26

The VI's fixed smile had grown irritating. "Is there anything else you need, Dr. Baynham?"

"No." Shepard started to turn. "Wait. Yes."

"How can I be of assistance?"

"Within the company, who has records of the thorian project?"

"I apologize," it said, without ever varying its placidly helpful tone. "I am unable to access those records on account of your probation."

She blinked. "My… what?"

"You were placed under administrative restrictions following your vocal and persistent objections to established company policy regarding the thorian project, for which you were tasked with overseeing the health and safety of the Zhu's Hope experimental group."

"Right. How silly of me," Shepard said, distantly. Ian's defense of Lizbeth and her prevarication now made a certain degree of sense. Lizbeth was trying to protect the colonists- even if her reasoning was flawed.

Tali pressed forward. "Shepard, we've got to get that barrier down. It's interfering with communications and we need to warn the ground team what they're dealing with."

Shepard couldn't agree more. "We're done here. Move out."

They left the VI nattering behind them and pushed further into the complex. This was the laboratory wing. Standing-height counters graced with all manner of instrumentation were installed within the long, shallow chambers Prothean architects evidently favored. None of it was operational. All emergency power was diverted to critical resources, like the VI overseeing records and security, with none left for the experiments.

Liara, a scientist to her core, looked around in dismay. "This was a place of research and learning. Now it's a slaughterhouse."

Several bodies of colonists too slow for geth rifles lay up against the cabinetry. Garrus bent and closed their eyes. "We're not likely to find any survivors in this base."

Shepard shook her head. "The only thing we can do for them now is finish this. We need to find the source of the barrier."

Lizbeth's ident pass proved invaluable as they moved from one area to the next. Eventually, they stumbled upon two geth units tending to a room that once held ExoGeni servers. The synthetics fell quickly under the squad's surprise attack, but they weren't Shepard's deepest concern.

"Goddess," Liara breathed, staring. The thick walls were pierced by metal claws larger than their Mako, where the silvery geth ship had dug into the side of the facility.

Tali bent and examined cables running from the claws to disappear down unknown hallways. "The geth ship is almost certainly powering the shield, but I don't see a way aboard."

Garrus, not one for caution, let off a few rounds. The only result was to send bullets ricocheting into the ceiling. "It's going to take more ordinance than we've got to make it let go."

Shepard, however, was fixated a blindingly well-lit area sheltered by the claws, forming the skeleton of a half-dome. There were two bodies piled within it before a terminal limbed with the same odd blue light as the jamming tower back at Zhu's Hope. The downed geth were tending it when they arrived. "What in the hell is that?"

Tali shied away from it, appalled. "Keelah… it looks like some kind of… shrine."

Liara wandered closer. "It does bear the hallmarks of a temple or sacred site."

"Maybe it's some kind of complicated comm device." She chewed her lip. The theory was plausible, but it was difficult to make out any features due to the intensity of the light. "Reapers are their gods, right? So what hell does this have to do with that?"

"It's got to be something else," Garrus argued. "Why would synthetics mess around with religion? They know their creators- they're the quarians."

Tali shuddered. "I don't know. I don't like it."

Shepard was tempted to kick the terminal over, it was that disturbing, but the thought of touching it made her stomach shrivel. _Just like dragon's teeth. _She turned away from the tableau. The simple motion was harder than expected. Her brain jumped to a memory of Darcy babbling before the jamming tower, but the exact connection eluded her. "I don't think we should spend more time here than necessary."

"Agreed." Garrus pointed with his rifle. "These stairs lead down to the shuttle bay, where they brought in deliveries from Zhu's Hope. If nothing else we should find the shuttles there."

The squad continued onward. Here and there, they found more evidence of geth hostilities, whether it was fire damage, bullet holes, or the more human relics- bodies, blood, and abandoned spaces thrown into chaos. They also found actual geth holding out in defensible areas, along with additional krogan. The way they rearranged the offices to form barricades and barriers infuriated Shepard. First they invade and disrupt these people's lives in a way that would never be forgotten, long after this was over, and then they repurpose all these very human things to entrench themselves within the facility. It was sickening.

Eventually, they reached the shuttle bay, which doubled as a warehouse. Shepard kept close to the wall, trying to get a sense of the terrain. She guessed that the geth would be unwilling to leave a major tactical resource like the colony's shuttle fleet unguarded.

She was correct. Patrolling the warehouse floor was a destroyer unit. Standing nearly four meters tall and armed to teeth, they were formidable enemies even without factoring in the close quarters. The warehouse was so stuffed with unopened crates, shuttles, and monitoring terminals that there was scarcely room to move. It was overseeing a dozen-odd smaller units toting everything from assault rifles to flame throwers to rocket launchers.

_I really hate these bastards. _She scuttled across and took cover on the stairs leading down to the floor. Garrus followed. Tali and Liara set up around the entryway and gave her the nod. Shepard took aim at one of the rocket-kitted geth towards the back and opened fire.

There were a lot of synthetics. The noise level rose immediately to a level that rendered ears useless. While she managed to take out her target in the opening exchange, thereafter she was forced to spend more time in cover than firing back. Their stray shots peppered the far wall. Between the shuttles, the hydraulic pipelines for the cranes, and the ugly claws of the geth ship, nobody was lacking for cover. Shepard thought with exasperation that they were doing more damage to the room than each other.

Liara created a mass effect field that cleared some of the mess, but it caught as many crates as geth. It did, however, allow Shepard a clear shot at the destroyer. The first took out its blue flashlight face. The following drove it back several paces. Liara flung a ball of dark energy that hit it squarely in the chest, causing it to stumble and fall.

Meanwhile, Tali was crouched over her omni-tool, doing everything in her power to interfere with the geth's electrical systems. Her familiarity with geth technology was as obvious as it was valuable. She knew exactly where they were vulnerable, and a week's worth of heavy fighting against them at Zhu's Hope, not to mention examining the remains, had done nothing to dull her skill. Her steady work was keeping their shields down and allowing the others to pick away at their hardware.

Shepard and Garrus squatted side-by-side and did their best to keep the geth off their friends, who were doing all they could to control the battlefield. There was a tense moment as one of the lighter geth units slipped around out of their line of sight, but that same maneuver left it very exposed as it attempted to charge up the stair. It wasn't long before the four teammates were the only ones left moving.

Shepard picked her way down over the debris. Someone from ExoGeni was going to have a massive clean-up job before this place would be habitable again. Where there bullets had pierced the great shuttle bay doors, dingy sunshine spilled through, casting the warehouse in the yellow of old attics, dust motes stirred up by the heavy fighting dancing in the light. Several of the shuttles were likely damaged beyond repair. These weren't military spacecraft with armor plating, and the geth were carrying some serious ordinance. Shepard was thankful that eezo cores were far more inert than their chemical predecessors.

Tali paused when they reached the destroyer to relieve it of its memory core. As Shepard understood it, each type of geth had a unique electronic design as well as the more obviously unique carapace. What made less sense was when Tali tried to explain that each unit also possessed individual characteristics, much most humans had roughly the same "hardware and software" but cultivated distinct personalities. A few AI had crossed her path over the years, and in her experience they had about as much personality as her ship. Sure, they were distinguishable from each other, but not in ways that could not be explained by differences in programming.

Some of the crew had taken to debating in their downtime whether the geth were sentient beings or simply advanced machines. Shepard had a hard time grasping the relevancy. Were the times the Alliance sent her to fight batarians or turians or other human beings supposed to feel markedly different? If it was shooting at her, she felt little remorse in shooting back, regardless of whether it was toting a brain.

She reached the claw embedded at the far end of the shuttle bay. "We've got to find a way to make it let go of the building."

Liara glanced at the shuttle fleet. "Could we overload one of the eezo cores?"

"Only if you wanted to take out half the building with it." Tali was bemused. "But that gives me an idea. Does anyone see the control console for those bay doors?"

Shepard understood immediately what Tali was after. The claw closest to them was snaked in through an open door, massive in scope. If they could bring it down with enough force, it might damage the claw sufficiently to weaken the ship's hold. "That ship is incredibly heavy and these claws are tiny relative to its bulk. Holding it vertical like that has got to be precarious."

"It won't take much," Tali agreed.

"Over here," Garrus called, powering up a console along the back wall. There was a groan of hydraulics coming back online. Tali hurried over and began to interface with her omni-tool.

The turian gave Shepard a sidelong glance. "So. Still think these colonies can stand defenseless and wait for the government to save them?"

She shook her head. "You just don't give up, do you."

"ExoGeni was supposed to protect them until military help could arrive, and look how well that worked out."

"If ExoGeni had followed procedure, the Alliance would have been alerted to the problem as soon as Feros comm traffic stopped. A scouting ship would have arrived within two days, and the necessary support soon thereafter. We're going this alone because I don't have time to wait for them to show up."

"Procedure." He said it like a dirty word.

"How would you have it, Garrus?" Shepard asked, exasperated. "Gangs of armed civilians making up their own self-serving rules in the name of defending the colony?"

"As soon as you take people out of the equation and put 'corporation' or 'bureaucracy' in their place, everything goes to hell. ExoGeni is acting in its own best interests. You can never expect it to do otherwise." He sighed. "Anyway, that disturbs me less than the fact that it would be three days or more before real Alliance support arrived. There's always so many regulations and red tape tying everything down."

"You're right." She shook her head. "It is slower than anyone would like. But it's the best we've got. Not for nothing have at least four completely distinct civilizations come up with very similar answers to this problem. That should tell you something about how tricky it actually is."

"It's been a long time since asari, turians, or salarians expanded into unsettled space in any official capacity," he acknowledged. "I've always admired that about humanity. You never let comfort stop you from doing anything."

Liara offered her a warm smile. "You're explorers at heart. Since the Relay 314 Incident, everyone in the galaxy has been wondering what humanity brings to the table. It's this. Tenacity, curiosity, drive… I admit I did not truly understand before finding myself aboard the _Normandy_."

The corner of Shepard's mouth twitched. "Don't tell me you thought we were big bad bullies like the rest of them."

"Perhaps." Her own lips quirked. "The reality turned out to be far more nuanced."

"What, you mean you don't want to gobble up the galaxy one race at a time?" Garrus teased. "Better not tell Udina."

"If Garrus and Shepard are quite done sniping." Tali rejoined them, crossed her arms and sat back on her heels. "Honestly if I'd wanted to listen to political arguments I would have stayed with the Migrant Fleet."

Garrus grinned. "Just trying to make you feel at home."

Shepard rolled her eyes. "You have something, Tali?"

"I think so." She gestured at the console controlling the hydraulics. "If we back up pressure in the system at several key points, and overload it with very precise timing, we might be able to slam down the shuttle bay door. It may force the ship to loosen its grasp."

"Sounds good. Set it up."

"A word of warning. There is some possibility that the ship may damage the structure of the building by hanging on as it slides off." Her luminous eyes blinked behind her purple-tinted mask. "I suggest everybody stand back."

"Will do." Shepard and the others retreated to the stairs, shortly joined by Tali, who had programmed the console appropriately.

She spent the next minute twisting her hands and fretting. "I don't know if I set everything up correctly. I had to override several safety procedures. And I'm not very familiar with proprietary human technology. It's possible that I mixed up several of the sub-"

At that moment, the door came crashing down like the fist of a god. There was a scream of tortured metal, a shower of sparks, and suddenly the giant, severed claw was lying on the ground.

The four of them took a few seconds to reflect on that.

"Holy shit," said Shepard succinctly.

"Damn." Garrus shook his head. "That's gotta stin-"

The ship wasn't quite done yet. With a slow, momentous groan of crumbling concrete, the second claw lying in the bay slid out, like the calving of a glacier, drawing a foot-deep gouge as it tore loose. It left behind a hole in the building nearly large enough to fly through.

There was a horrible scraping sound, and the daylight shining through the warehouse's newest door was momentarily extinguished by the titanic slide of a slivery mass moving at some speed. In a matter of seconds, it was gone. Shepard counted in her head waiting for the crash, but it never came. It was a very long way down.

Liara stared, her blue eyes nearly wide enough to see white all the way around. "Was that… was that the geth ship?"

"Was is the key word here." Shepard clapped the quarian on the back. "Good grief, Tali'Zorah. I think you earned your keep today."

Tali was still in shock. Her mask swung towards Shepard and back towards the gaping hole.

Liara's brow bunched, worried. "I didn't hear it hit ground. You don't think it recovered?"

"Probably what, a hundred-fifty meters down?" Garrus clicked his mandibles. "No, never."

Shepard concurred. "That's not nearly enough distance to recover from that kind of dive."

Tali finally found her voice. "Good riddance," she said, fervently.

It was then that Shepard realized what she wasn't seeing. "There's no barrier over the wall. Looks like we were right- the ship was powering it."

"We can finally warn Zhu's Hope about that creature." Liara beamed.

Garrus, however, was thinking along the same lines as Shepard. "It was the geth ship? Not Saren's ship?"

Shepard cursed. "Fuck. He's not even here, is he. That's why we couldn't find his dreadnought on any of the scans. He delegated this to the geth alone."

"It doesn't matter. We have what he was after, and we got to it before his army."

Liara shuddered. "I dread what he planned to do with it. I don't want to think of someone like Saren being able to subdue minds at will."

Something about the situation felt off to Shepard. Her stomach was still curled up tight. _He has an entire army already. He's not interested in domination, so why fixate on a mind-controlling plant?_

Though come to think of it, she hadn't wasted much thought on his motives. They seemed irrelevant. What would drive anyone, regardless of how sadistic or racist, to usher in something like the reapers? In a game of galactic destruction, Saren would lose as much as anyone. It was senseless.

And she was wasting time. Shepard activated her comm link. "Shepard to _Normandy_."

"Fucking finally!" Joker sounded anxious. "Commander, you've got to get your ass back here ASAP. We've got a situation."

"Give me the rundown." She was moving before he stopped talking. Her squad, not privy to the conversation, trailed behind in confusion.

"The colonists lost their freaking minds, is what happened."

/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\

_Earlier_

Hana Murakami still hadn't left the crane control terminal. More than that, Lieutenant Alenko had been unable to approach the outlier module again, due to the increased scrutiny of the other Zhu's Hope colonists. It was the strangest thing. None of them had spoken to Murakami but somehow, every time he tried to get away, one of them managed to waylay him. Once or twice he would call a coincidence, but a dozen times was a correlation.

"There is something weird going on here," he muttered to himself.

"You're telling me," Wrex rumbled, his keen ears ovearhearing. "This place smells wrong. These people act wrong. Like a pack of varren but with more brains."

"I'm surprised at you, Wrex. I figured after a couple centuries of merc work, you would have seen just about everything."

"I have. That's why I'm worried." He snorted. "If this was a regular sort of job, I would have beat tracks out of here two days ago."

Alenko glanced at a pair of colonists guarding the hall. They stared back. "You think we should leave?"

"I think Shepard told us to stay put, but sometimes the situation changes. There's more of them than us if it comes down to it."

The lieutenant thought about what she said, rubbed his nose and looked away. "Actually she ordered me to protect the ship and the ground crew, and if we could defend the colony in the bargain, great."

Wrex blinked. There was a note of approval in his voice. "And here I was starting to think she was some kind of idealist."

"She keeps her priorities straight." He hesitated. "She really wants to nail Saren to the wall. It's more than completing the mission or defending the Alliance. I'm worried she's becoming obsessed."

The krogan grunted, agreeing, and a dry grin crossed his face. "Shepard's found an enemy worthy of her. It's a good hunt. You don't get many like this in a lifetime."

"That's an… emotional way of putting it."

"With enough training anyone can fight by the book. And anyone can fight when they're cornered. But the best fights, the ones you sing about later, come between artists of the craft at the peak of their talents. That's Shepard and Saren." Wrex laughed. "Even if I didn't have my own bone to pick, I think I would've come just to watch."

Alenko wasn't impressed. "If you say so."

"You don't have any idea." Wrex pointed at him. "'Cause you really are an idealist. You fight because you think it's the right thing to do. I fight because I don't know any other way. Fighting an unworthy enemy is like squashing a bug. There's no honor in it. There's not even any fun in it."

He thought about. It was uncomfortably close to feeling like truth. Fighting geth bored Shepard. Abduction, murder, invasion- none of it fazed her. But Saren's audacity, the gall of tromping over _her _space and harming _her _people, that got under her skin. She spent a good deal of time trying to get inside his head, figure out how he thought, trying to guess his next move. Hatred warred with fascination.

But that was different from what Wrex was describing, recklessly waging war for lack of anything better to do. A hint of sarcasm entered his tone. "I'm sorry it frustrates you."

Wrex sat back, adjusting his shotgun. "You have to savor the good fights. That's all." He glanced up and his grin widened. "And I think you like that about her. You've never experienced that kind of relentless ferocity and you're curious what it feels like."

Alenko was spared answering when Serviceman Bakari came running up. "Sir, you need to hear this."

"Report." His brow wrinkled. "You look excited."

"Yes, sir. I've been listening in on geth comm chatter, using Tali's decryption program. It's fascinating, you know- they use a kind of inverted form of the Khouri-Chute algorithm, only it's-"

"Maybe we can have the details another time, Serviceman. What did you hear?"

Bakari refocused. "Right. It seems they're retreating, sir. Falling back. All of them."

Alenko blinked, taken aback. "I guess the Commander got through. This is better than we hoped."

He started to raise his hand to his ear, to call out an order. Then the two colonists at the hall abruptly went blank, their faces and body language wiped of all expression. Their weapons drooped in their hands.

That caught Wrex's attention. He raised his shotgun reflexively. "What the hell-"

Alenko's mind flashed to the crane, and the hab module. _This will not end well._ "Take cov-"

The colonists opened fire.

/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\

"-and that's when everything went to hell, ma'am. You picked a bad time to go quiet." Joker was trying to sound casual, but relief colored every word.

Shepard started to run, heading for the exit and the Mako. "I need a status update. Did the ground crew make it to the ship?"

"They regrouped and made a full retreat. Bakari and two of the marines were injured. Chakwas is patching them up, but it's going slow, on account of her wrist getting all smashed up."

"What? How?"

"That colonist we were keeping in the medbay? David? Yeah, he kind of went crazy. She managed to lock him in Liara's lab."

"Get Khaledi and Crosby to help her. They've got battlefield first responder training." There was flight of stairs. She sat on the smooth concrete guard wall and slid down, to pick up a little speed, and hit the bottom running. "Is the ship secure?"

"Well, the colonists followed the ground team back, and now they're beating on the hull with their hands, rifle butts, whatever's available, barbarian-style. Occasionally shoot at us. You know, standard sticks and stones stuff." It would be funny in other circumstances.

"Well, they can't do any real damage. Don't hurt them if you can avoid it. This isn't their fault."

"Sure, Commander- it's not like they've been drinking the special kool-aid or anything." Joker was in disbelief. "They're nuts and they're shooting at us."

"I'm not kidding. There's a life form on this planet that's turning them into mind slaves, and now that the geth are leaving, it wants us dead. That's what ExoGeni was hiding. That's what Saren wanted." She hurried through the exit and splashed along the tunnel where they found Lizbeth. "We're going to take a shuttle back just as soon as I can find someone to fly it. Hold position. Shepard out."

Garrus grabbed her arm. "Shepard, what the hell is going on?"

"Once we knocked out the geth ship, I think the thorian decided the best way to wrap up this mess was to kill the last of the witnesses. Everyone made it out but the situation is deteriorating rapidly."

Liara volunteered, "I can fly a shuttle."

"Great. Do you know the launch codes that will release it from the electromagnetic clamps?"

"Well, no."

"There's no time to hack it. ExoGeni's running a cheap-ass tech mill using labor bought with a pack of lies, and that's exactly why the equipment that might conceivably get someone out of this hellhole will be locked down tight. And there's no time to take the Mako back over that sorry excuse for a road."

They made it up out of the tunnels and located the Mako. Shepard waited impatiently for it to power up before throwing it in gear and peeling down the ramp. Against all logic, this model of tank liked to bounce, and the ceiling wasn't that high. It took concentration to keep it from banging against the roof, which was quite irritating, as it kept her from fully enumerating the ways she was going to twist these ExoGeni bastards into pretzels. _They lied to me to hide a dangerous discovery and the breaking of about three dozen colonial AND galactic laws, they used the colonists they promised a new start as test subjects, and my crew got caught in the crossfire. _

She hadn't asked Joker about the severity of the injuries. This was largely because she suspected she would need Jeong alive for at least the next twenty minutes.

The Mako slammed to a stop and she jumped out. It caught her squad by surprise and they fumbled after, trying to follow. Shepard didn't bother to wait. Jeong had the security team back at their posts. The guards half-heartedly raised their weapons as she stalked down the ramp.

"You need to stop right there, Commander," Kelm ordered. The security chief didn't sound very sure of himself.

Shepard flashed him a glare that should have left him a smoking ash imprint on the far wall. "If you want me to stop, I dare you to try."

Kelm weighed ExoGeni's ability to make his life difficult in the long term against Shepard's promise to make it difficult in the extreme short term, and made the wiser choice. He stepped to the side and saluted smartly. "No, ma'am."

"Where the fuck is Jeong?"

The tiny middle-manager was standing in the middle of the garage, pale and sweating, waving his gun wildly every time the other refugees so much as twitched. They were clustered together in a far corner. Juliana Baynham was standing at the forefront with a look of absolute iron, cautious, but not at all cowed by Jeong's display. Lizbeth, equally pale, stood just behind her. She swallowed as Shepard came into view.

"Everyone just shut up! Stay where you are!" Jeong whirled on the spot and leveled the gun at the commander. "I suppose it was too much to hope the geth would kill you."

Shepard didn't even break stride. To his credit, he got off one shot before she reached him. It ricocheted off her shields and buried itself in a crossbeam. As with Greta, she grabbed the offending arm and pulled it tight behind his back, but unlike the colonist, she didn't bother to check herself when she felt resistance. "You son of a bitch."

The bone snapped with a crack louder than his pistol report. Jeong gagged at the sudden pain, dropping the gun instantly. Shepard kicked it away.

Garrus caught up, finally, his rifle leveled on the ExoGeni auditor. "You want to maybe fill us in on the strategy, next time?"

"You broke my arm!" Jeong's voice was several octaves higher than normal. He staggered away from her, clutching the damaged limb, staring at her like she was a vengeful ghost. "You crazy bitch! You broke my arm!"

"You lied to me, Jeong. And you shot at me. That was a very poor decision."

"We were waiting for instructions from corporate." He managed to straighten, finding the last of his dignity. "Which we finally received, once that barrier came down."

Juliana could no longer hold her tongue. "Commander, they ordered him to purge the colony!"

A bad taste filled Shepard's mouth. "What exactly do they mean, purge?"

Jeong wheezed and put a little more distance between them. "We don't have any other choice. Two seconds after you're out of here you're going to call in the navy-"

"Already done," Shepard said smugly. It was the first thing they did after wrecking the jamming tower at Zhu's Hope.

"-and someone has to look out for the company. ExoGeni keeps us all alive. We must act in the interests of the majority." His tone became pleading. "If that… thing is still here when they come-"

"You mean the best interests of your shareholders," Shepard snarled, drawing back her arm.

Liara grabbed at it. "Shepard, think. We need him."

"He can't help us if you cave in his skull," Garrus reasoned, looking over at the shuddering man. "No matter how richly he deserves it."

Juliana glanced between them. "What are you talking about? What 'thing'?"

Shepard addressed Jeong with acid sweetness. "Are you going to tell them about the thorian, or shall I?"

Jeong's face was a caricature of fury. He muttered something darkly.

Lizbeth twisted her hands. "There's… there's a telepathic plant living underneath Zhu's Hope. It releases spores into the air that cause exposed animal life forms to become slaves to its will. Almost all of Zhu's Hope is infected."

Juliana's mouth dropped open. Jeong, however, had no problem finding his tongue. He shook his finger at her. "That's _proprietary company information_. Corporate will have your head for this."

Shepard took a deep breath. "There's not going to be any purging. You made those colonists what they are, and you're going to live with it for as long as it lasts."

"I'm afraid that's unacceptable."

"Damn it, Jeong, people are hurt. This isn't company politics." She glanced around the room. "If even one person on this godforsaken planet had been honest with me, this would have been over days ago."

"Not all of us knew about this… creature," Juliana stated, with an annoyed look at her daughter.

Lizbeth exhaled. "You don't know what it was like. ExoGeni was breathing down the necks of everyone working on the project. Anyone who wasn't delivering results, anyone who was violating procedure, was deliberately infected. Nobody wanted to be next."

Shepard gestured around the garage. "Do you see ExoGeni here, Lizbeth? Or do you just see a bunch of frightened people who've watched their home overrun by machines?"

The young woman swallowed and looked away.

"I can't allow the thorian to survive, Commander." Jeong found some semblance of calm. "If the Alliance knew the full extent of what we did, everyone here would be liable. This isn't ExoGeni's only colony, and those people are depending on the money continuing to flow. You might not like ExoGeni, but they do look out for us, in their own way."

"Tell them the geth killed the thorian."

He shook his head. "Won't work. People are still being exposed to the spores."

Slowly, Lizbeth said, "If the primary… node were destroyed, it's possible the other, lesser nodes would wither and die. No more spores."

"Or one of them could develop into a new primary node," Jeong shot back.

Shepard overrode him. "It's worth a try. I need a shuttle pilot if I'm going to make it back to the spaceport and take this thing out."

Jeong took a step towards her. "I'm afraid I can't let you do that."

That was the moment when, for the first time, he experienced the full weight of Shepard's pointed gaze, with every ounce of every hopeless mission she'd seen through poured into it. Each awful memory, each unforgettable image, all the experience, determination, and sheer ungodly stubbornness that made her Commander Shepard fell on the auditor. It pinned Jeong to the air like the corporate cockroach he was.

Aloud, she merely said, quite calmly, "You're a bean-counter. I'm a spectre, and you're getting in my way. Tell me, how do you like those odds?"

The blood ran out of his face. He took a step back, stumbling into Juliana.

Her eyes lingered on him another long second, before lowering the wattage of her expression and turning to the refugees. "I need a shuttle pilot."

"I'll do it." Lizbeth's voice shook a little, but her face was determined. "It was my job to look after their safety. I used to fly over there all the time."

"Why aren't you infected, then?"

"Prophylactic anti-fungal treatments." Her nervous smile was fleeting and humorless. "Please. I want to help them, if I can."

"Alright." Shepard looked around. "The rest of you, stay put. We crashed the geth ship, but there may still be patrols out. Be ready for anything."

Garrus cleared his throat. "Are you planning to stop at the _Normandy_?"

"That's where the shuttle docks, and I'm going to need some of the ordinance we have aboard to kill this thing," she confirmed.

"In that case, I'd like to stay back. There's no room for five in the Mako. Four was stretching things already. Besides, these people could use some real protection."

She frowned. He had a point, but they were split up enough already. "Fine. If our auditor here tries to pull another hostage crisis, shoot him."

He grinned. "With pleasure."

Tali also volunteered. "I'll stay back as well. I doubt the thorian is going to have any fancy electronics anyway."

Shepard nodded. "Liara, Lizbeth, you're with me. Let's go."

/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\

They hurried down into the shuttle bay. Lizbeth flitted around the room, flipping on terminals and ordering the VI to reroute power resources when necessary. When the VI objected that Lizbeth lacked the relevant authorizations, Shepard was chagrined to hear the young scientist simply declare "emergency protocols" to be in effect.

"That would have been useful an hour ago," she said.

"There wasn't enough time to explain everything." Lizbeth began entering commands. "I have to hard restart everything. I'm sorry, this may take awhile."

"My crew's been Zhu's Hope well over a week, you know. I understand them not telling us, because they're under thorian control, but allowing this continue? Not owning up when I finally got to this end of the colony? That's inexcusable." She shook her head, disgusted. "I suppose after all that it was too much to hope you might be able to launch one measly shuttle in a reasonable amount of time."

Lizbeth glared. "That's not fair. I'm doing the best I can."

Shepard crossed her arms and leaned against the wall, considering her for a moment that stretched into discomfort. Abruptly, she said, "I've been told I expect too much of people."

"Too damn true," Lizbeth muttered, pecking away at the terminal.

Liara bit her lip. "You drive people to be their best. That's your job."

Shepard continued as if she hadn't heard either of them. "If you ask me, most people expect too little of each other. It's a sad day when the bar's dropped to 'refuses to collude with the enslavement of others', and there's the expectation of a gold star for effort when even that abysmal standard is not met."

Lizbeth spoke with cold fury. "I looked you up, while we were waiting for you to return. You're a special forces commando. You can't tell me you've never been ordered to withhold information for the good the Alliance."

"Never information that would harm innocent human beings."

"I stayed behind, you know." Lizbeth sounded quite put out. "I tried to alert Colonial Affairs but the geth cut the power first."

"Our little hero." Shepard was not impressed. "The time to call Colonial Affairs was when ExoGeni started exploiting colonists without consent to study a dangerous alien life form. Forget Systems Alliance law. This is a matter of Council sanctions."

Lizbeth fell silent, faintly red-cheeked and not without a slight air of shame.

Liara walked over to Shepard and started to lay a hand on her shoulder, reassuringly, an attempt to cool the temperature, but Shepard flinched away. "Don't."

Hurt flashed across the asari's face. Seeing it stung more than it should. Angry with herself, Shepard pushed off the wall and found another console, deciding that if they were going to be stuck here awhile, she could at least raid the ExoGeni data banks. She started with exports.

Unsurprisingly, most of the entries fed back into other ExoGeni sites. However, once she filtered those out, she made an unexpected discovery. There were a number of invoices bearing the same orange-and-black hexagon logo she spotted on the transmitter on Edolus. Shepard opened one at random.

_Dr. Gamorle,_

_We require a new batch of samples. The previous shipment proved inadequate. Most specimens never awoke from hibernation and the remainder is not sufficient for a proper study. We may be able to harness Species 37's unique capabilities, but only with your full cooperation. Naturally, our data exchange remains in effect, as negotiated in our contract._

_I will also take this opportunity to remind you that Cerberus research is held to a very high standard, and we have expended a hefty sum of credits on your discovery. We select our business partners quite carefully. It would be unwise to give our leadership cause to doubt this investment._

_Sincerely, _

_Dr. Cynthia Wayne_

Following that was a message from Gamorle expressing doubt in the arrangement. He felt it would have been wiser to wait until ExoGeni synthesized an antidote before selling thorian samples. ExoGeni evidently disagreed, as the response took the form a reprimand and clear instructions to proceed. Shepard copied all of it to her omni-tool.

They called themselves Cerberus. She'd never heard of them. They certainly liked sounding the cloak-and-dagger variety of darkness, but Shepard had a hard time picturing a criminal ring of scientists luring an Alliance ship into a fatal trap. Some pieces were still missing.

"Ready," Lizbeth called out. The door of the closest shuttle swung up as the vehicle rose on its stabilizers, prepared for launch.

The scientist, the archaeologist, and the commander climbed aboard. Lizbeth took the pilot's seat, scanning her instrumentation and making the necessary adjustments. Liara took the co-pilot couch while Shepard stood behind, leaning over her shoulder. "Get me the _Normandy_. We need to figure out how this is going to work."

"Right away." Liara flipped the comm switch and found the correct frequency.

Lowe came on the line. "This is the _SSV Normandy, _identify."

"Specialist Lowe, this is Commander Shepard. I'm on a shuttle headed back to Zhu's Hope as we speak. Please have Navigator Pressly and Lieutenant Alenko join me in the comm room."

"Aye aye ma'am. Transferring now."

Shepard paced the rear of the shuttle as she waited. Meanwhile, Lizbeth got them in the air and set a direct course back to the spaceport. The disastrous Skyway flowed smoothly beneath them. _Why the hell does the Alliance equip frigates with tanks instead of shuttles? This is so much simpler._

The comm crackled. "This is Pressly. Are you there, ma'am?"

She turned her attention back to the mission. "Copy that. How bad are things down there?"

"Bakari's in critical condition. The doc thinks the other two should be back on their feet in a few days. I still don't know what to make of Talaqani. He's beating himself against the hatch, trying to get out."

"Nothing we can do about that now. The plan is to kill the plant that's at the root of all this." Shepard cursed the unintentional pun, and cleared her throat. "Which brings me to my next point. Lieutenant, are you there?"

"Yes, ma'am." Alenko's voice crackled over the line.

Shepard suppressed her sudden and rather unexpected relief at hearing it. She cleared her throat a second time and laid out her idea, sketchy as it was. "The colonists are distracted by the thorian's commands to kill all of you. It must be angry, because they're not going about this intelligently at all. I think we can slip a team into Zhu's Hope."

"There's not enough room in this dock to pull up to the cargo bay, which only leaves the airlock," Pressly protested. "And the colonists are right outside."

"With due respect, sir, that's not entirely accurate," Alenko countered. "There are maintenance hatches at several points along the fuselage. They're not supposed to be opened- or even accessible- unless the ship is in dry dock."

Shepard was pleased. "There should be one going out the back near the entrance to the medbay."

Pressly had reservations. "Commander, those hatches are restricted because they expose the space between the inner and outer hulls. There's all kinds of nasty materials in there to protect us from vacuum, radiation, and the byproducts of our own systems, not to mention the structures supporting the IES."

"We're in atmo, so the hazards should be minimal. Get engineering to help." Shepard moved along to the next phase of the plan. "Our pilot will hover on the far side of the ship, and an infiltration team will board. We'll set down in Zhu's Hope, find the exact location of this zombie plant thing, and take it down."

"I can help you with one of those." Alenko coughed. "I'm reasonably certain they're hiding the entrance leading to the thorian under a hab module. It doesn't connect to anything and they left it under guard. Took me awhile to catch on, but once I figured it out, they wouldn't let me near it."

"Good work. We'll try that first." Shepard leaned against Liara's couch, folding her arms. "Pick who you want for the team. Not too many. I want a good-sized force left behind in case the colonists do find a way to board the ship. I don't want to hurt them, but I damn well will if they threaten any more of us."

Pressly made a sound of concurrence. "Understood, ma'am."

"Lieutenant?"

"I'm on board. Do we know what we're up against?"

"Other than its powers of influence, no. But there are a few things I want you to collect."

/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\

Adams' engineers located the necessary maintenance hatch in short order. Unfortunately, it was not a straight shoot to the outer hull. Adams himself squeezed through the hatch and worked his way down the narrow space until he found the exit. "We've got a problem, Commander."

Shepard glanced at Lizbeth's instruments. Their ETA was less than five minutes. "What kind of problem?"

"There's not enough room to maneuver in here to open the outer hatch from this side. We've already had to deactivate cooling and the kinetic barriers to make this safe. The ship can't stay fully powered like this for long without accruing damage."

"Roger that. We're a few minutes out. What do we need to open the hatch?"

"A wrench, for starters."

"Where am I going to get a wrench on a-"

"There's an emergency maintenance kit in the passenger compartment," Lizbeth interjected. "Under the seat."

Shepard located the toolkit and hauled it out, raising her voice to reach the comm from the shuttle's rear. "Next question. How do we know where to park if the door's shut?"

"I'm attaching a homing device to the inside of the hatch. Your shuttle ladar should pick it up."

A bright dot appeared on Liara's screen, overlapping the bulk of the _Normandy_. "Got it."

"Godspeed, Commander. Adams out."

Shepard turned her attention to Lizbeth. "Go in as smoothly and discreetly as possible. Use the ship to hide us. We can't afford to capture the colonists' attention."

The young woman nodded and eased them forward. Sweat beaded on her brow. Lizbeth was intensely out of her element. Shepard's eyes rose from the instrumentation to the shuttle window, watching as they turned into the docking bay. "Easy does it… little further… there. Stop."

The wash from the shuttle's stabilizers brushed the paint of the _SSV Normandy_ with gentle efficiency, polished off the dust and leaving a fan-shaped spread so porcelain white that it made the rest of the ship look filthy in comparison. Shepard couldn't suppress a wince. _She sure as hell doesn't look new anymore._

Lizbeth popped the side door and Shepard leaned out the side of the compartment, Liara hovering nervously at her elbow. It only took a few moments to locate the frame of the hatch and the bolt that secured it. Shepard scraped at the cover, trying to expose the bolt, but it was wedged shut and she was forced to abuse the wrench as a crowbar to pop it open. The bolt similarly required several muscle-aching yanks before she felt it start to give.

The maintenance hatch popped open with a hiss of equalizing pressures. It was less than half the size of a standard hatch, a bit of a squeeze to fit through. None the less, she was nonplussed to find a lumpy plastic bag staring up at her when the door swung clear.

Alenko leaned into the frame. "It's pretty tight in here, ma'am. We could fit us or the gear but not both at the same time. Catch."

He tossed the bag at her. She caught it and hauled it inside. Alenko followed, hauling a hard trunk the size of a carry-on suitcase behind him. After him came Gunnery Chief Williams and Corporal Greico. Once they were on board, Shepard secured the hatch and gave Lizbeth a nod. "Take us out. If it looks clear, set us down in the shipping yard."

"Understood." The shuttle pulled away from the _Normandy_.

Alenko squatted and ripped into one of the bags, revealing a jumble of hardsuit pieces. He passed them to their owners and they began suiting up. Shepard prodded the other with her boot. "These are my mines?"

"Remote detonation, just like you asked." He locked his glove into place. "Commander, what exactly are you expecting to find under Zhu's Hope?"

She opened the case to double-check the munitions. "I'm not sure. Some kind of large spongy mass of sentient plant matter."

Lizbeth looked over her shoulder. "We're not certain the thorian has the capacity for higher reasoning."

"Until we know better, we're going to go with the worst-case assumption." Shepard took out several charges and clipped them to her belt, keeping the detonators separate, and passed the remainder to the lieutenant.

Williams was cocky, as usual. "It's a plant. It needs to turn people into robots to get anything done. It's not like it's going to fight back."

Liara leaned back in the co-pilot couch, folding her arms over her stomach. "How old must a creature this large be? It could have been a sapling when Feros was inhabited by the Prothean Empire."

Lizbeth bit her lip. "Some of the oldest fibrous samples we've taken indicate it may be much older than that. It could have controlled the Prothean settlers in a similar manner."

"That's impossible. The Protheans would have quarantined the whole planet. Wouldn't anyone?"

Shepard shrugged. "Look around, Liara. Does Feros look like it was a shining example of Prothean colonization, or does it look like as much of a backwater as it is now?"

"More developed, perhaps." Liara was wearing one of her earnest frowns, deliberating. "I will admit it does not seem as though the Protheans gave any attention to detail on this world. Everything is so… plain and functional."

Alenko leaned towards the window. "Commander, I think we're coming up on Zhu's Hope now."

Williams, too, craned her neck to get a look. "The place looks abandoned."

"It's a good sign, but don't take anything for granted." Shepard checked her gun and made her way to the hatch.

The chief glanced her way. "Why try to kill us, ma'am? Hell, everything we did protected this plant thing as much as the colonists. Where's the gratitude?"

"I don't know. Maybe after facing the geth it decided all of us are just too much trouble." She gave her a weary half-smile. "Doesn't matter. We're going to destroy it. Saren won't be able to exploit its abilities."

The shuttle settled in the middle of the yard. The marines disembarked, sweeping the area for any lingering colonists. As Shepard made to follow, Lizbeth suddenly turned around in her seat and snagged her hand.

Shepard frowned. "What is it?"

"There's more," she said, conflicted but urgent. "I couldn't say back at HQ. The thorian creates seedlings of a sort, mobile bundles of fibrous tissue about the size of an adult human when they're… unfurled."

"Unfurled?"

"We call them creepers. We've only ever found them in a stasis. They ball up on the ground near thorian offshoots, almost like seed pods. I have no idea if they've woken, but…"

"It could be trouble," Shepard finished. She regarded the woman for several seconds. "Thank you for warning me."

Lizbeth gave a curt nod and withdrew her hand. "I understand why you don't believe me, Shepard, but every choice I've made was my best effort to protect the colony- from everyone. I'm not going to apologize for it."

Then Shepard did smile, full and genuine. "Good for you."

Lizbeth nodded again, her face ever-so-slightly pink. "I'm going to barricade myself in the shuttle. I'll keep it running."

Shepard moved into the shipping yard and found the crane terminal. It was easy to spot the misplaced module- it still had the lift ties fixed to the roof. The only mystery was how they didn't notice it sooner.

She had just hooked the hoist line into place when she caught a shuffle of movement out of the corner of her eye. Her hand went to her pistol on autopilot, drawing smoothly as she turned.

Fai Dan shambled towards her. One of his legs was dragging, as though he'd been injured, and a sidearm dangled in his left hand.

"Commander," he said weakly, coughing.

She kept her pistol trained on the colonist, but held her fire. "Why aren't you with the rest?"

"I tried to fight it, you know." He flinched, and swallowed, tightly. Every muscle in his face was pulled taut. "It gets in your head. You can't imagine the pain."

"It doesn't have to be this way, Fai Dan." She moved her other hand to brace her gun and took a step to the side, keeping him in her sights. Behind him, she saw Alenko come out from behind the hab, his own pistol also raised.

"I was their leader. They trusted me." The old man coughed again. "It wants me to kill you."

The gun swung up in his hand. Shepard tensed, her finger pulling on the trigger, no quite enough to fire.

Fai Dan's right hand rose with infinite slowness and wrapped around the barrel. A vein throbbed in his forehead. In the background, Alenko moved closer, steadily, not fast enough to catch his attention. Shepard kept her eyes on the colonist.

"But I won't," he said, softly, almost too much so to hear him. With his right hand he forced the gun upwards until it touched his temple. The angle was awkward, but more than sufficient to atomize most of his brain. "I won't."

Fai Dan heaved a sigh and closed his eyes.

Shepard adjusted her aim by a fraction as swiftly as she could, meaning to stop him, but not soon enough. A look of intense peace came over his face, a half-second before it vanished in a shower of gore.

She eased the tension on her trigger and blew out a sigh of her own. "Damn it."

Alenko came running. "Are you alright, ma'am?"

"I'm fine."

Williams, hearing the shot, hurried from the other direction with Greico and Liara in tow. She stopped short when she saw the corpse. "We're clear. Jesus Christ."

Shepard turned back to the terminal, entering her commands with a bit more force than necessary. "He made a choice. I daresay, of the options available, it was not a poor one."

There was little to say to that. Williams located a blanket in the shipwreck and draped it over the body. She might have whispered a shred of prayer; it was difficult to tell.

Meanwhile, Shepard continued to work the crane. The apparently empty module lifted clear with ease, revealing a staircase leading down into the ruins. Unlike the rest of Feros, it was scrubbed clean. There was no sign of debris or decay.

Alenko made the same observation. "They were tending to it."

"I'm sure it had everything a giant toadstool could want out of life." Shepard maneuvered the hab to a clear spot in the yard and unhooked the crane, to make it more difficult for anyone to seal the exit behind them. "Let's go give it the happy ending it deserves."

She turned and addressed her team. "Williams and Greico, stay topside and guard these stairs. We're going in."

Williams groaned. "Aww, c'mon ma'am, there's nothing up here-"

"I believe I gave you an order, Chief." Shepard's tone was solid iron. "We've received information that the thorian may have other units available to mobilize. I'm not going to be attacked aft and fore at the same time. Understood?"

The chief opened her mouth. Shepard raised an eyebrow. Williams swallowed. "Aye aye, ma'am."

"Good." She jerked her head at Alenko and Liara. "Let's go."

The stairs wound down beneath the artificial skin of the world-city, well below where Shepard would have gauged the natural level of the ground. The temperature stabilized to a pleasant basement cool compared to the heat of the surface. The way was well-lit. The colonists of Zhu's Hope lavished care on this place they had not given their own home, much less anywhere else. The staircase leveled out into a long, narrow hallway strung with utility lights, creaking with the weight of the structure above. Otherwise it was utterly silent. No signs of debris or decay graced its walls; indeed, even the faint cracks one would expect as the minimum toll of fifty thousand years' neglect were carefully stopped up with reparative compounds and painted over a uniform shade of gray.

Liara shuddered as another settling groan echoed through the building. "This place will live on in my nightmares."

"Who knew something this bright and sterile could be nightmarish?" Alenko kept his pistol drawn.

"It's just a hallway," Shepard protested.

Alenko jumped slightly as a distant drip of water echoed against the walls. "Not going to lie, Commander, this place is freaking me out."

She was exasperated. "It's a single, simple, damned-"

The words died in her mouth as they entered a vaulting chamber, at least five stories high, and were confronted with the true, horrific majesty of the thorian.

"-plant," Shepard finished lamely, staring up at it. "We're going to need bigger guns."

"That's why we brought the mines, ma'am."

It was a vomit-green ranging to olive in more shadowed places, a bulky, pulsing mass suspended within the room by ten long, vine-like appendages disappearing into higher side rooms. Each floor was exposed to the central chamber with scarcely a guard rail for safety. The plant was teardrop-shaped and had no true eyes that Shepard could see, though soft bronze-touched indents near the low-hanging taper gave the impression of ocular sensitivity. The tip of the teardrop curved ever so slightly towards them, dangling a mass of slimy, draping vines over the platform on which they stood. The remainder of the creature hung over an abyss that vanished into darkness long before showing any sign of a floor.

The three of them approached with caution. Shepard could not imagine something that large would move easily, but there was no sense in being reckless.

The plant stirred. There was a gurgling noise, followed by a slithering sound of slime against slime, and a slight form dropped from the wreath of tentacles onto the platform.

"Oh, goddess," Liara breathed, stepping back, as the creature slowly uncurled with almost boneless grace.

It was a green-skinned asari, with over-large pupils and facial markings to match. She was clad in tight-fighting black commando armor, recognizable by the brown buckles running from groin to neck. Her head straightened and she regarded them steadily. There was something faintly speculative in her eyes. "I speak for the old growth, as I spoke for Saren. The creature before you has endured the long cycle and longer still, centuries beyond counting. You should be in awe."

Alenko trained his gun on her, glancing at Shepard for instructions. She wasn't certain she had any to give. This was an unexpected curveball. _Saren was here. When he was done he left this woman as a captive, along with a garrison of geth to destroy the thorian. Why?_

Behind her, however, Liara took a tentative step forward. She sounded confused. "Shiala?"

The asari's eyes drifted to the archaeologist for a fractional second, but soon refocused on the task at hand. "Speak. Why have you come here?"

Shepard kept her gaze fixed on the thorian itself. The asari was obviously a puppet. "I want what Saren wanted. Give it to me, call off your attack on my ship, and we will depart in peace."

"The air you push is lies, ones we have heard before." Her green eyes flashed with anger. "The old growth senses you are meat, fit only to consume. We will hear no more."

The attack came without warning. Shepard had a vague recollection of the asari flinging out her hand before the back of her head collided with the wall and she was shaking stars out of her vision. Alenko responded in kind, tossing the commando back against her thorian master. Liara threw up a singularity that pulled her away from the plant and into empty space.

Shepard shot at the asari puppet, but between having her bells rung for the second time in a week and the way the asari was bobbing around in the grip of the mass effect field, the shots went wide. The fungal mass of the thorian simply absorbed them, like a sponge taking on water. She was heartily glad they brought explosives.

She shook off the blow and scrambled to her feet. "Come on. When the field gives out, she's done for. It's a long way down. We've got to finish this."

They headed for the stairs to the second level at a dead run. Skittering echoed down the stairwell, like thin, stiff strips dragged across concrete, but they saw nothing. They did, however, pass a number of wicker-wood objects the size of beach balls that one could interpret as humanoids curled in a fetal position, if that was what one wanted to see. Shepard noted their presence, but filed it under the growing pile of troubling things that for the moment she could do nothing about.

They found the first node as they rounded the top of the stairs, anchoring one long thick vine. It was bulbous and almost fleshy, maybe two meters across, and a shade of peachy orange that made it seem more like animal flesh than plant matter. Shepard pulled a knife from her boot and slashed a deep gouge. It was warm, like compost, and there was no describing the stench. The nearest approximation in her experience was a stopped-up shower drain full of rotten hair.

The skittering grew louder. "Do something about that, would you?"

Alenko moved past her, up the hallway. Shepard pulled the brick of explosive compound and a detonator from her belt, connected the two by rote memory, and keyed it to her omni-tool. The whole package was shoved elbow-deep into the node. "Well, that's one."

There was a brief buzzing in her head and shots rang out down the hall. She raced to assist.

A solid half-dozen woody assailants pressed them back. They were the size of human adults, and were bipedal and bilaterally symmetric, but that was where the real similarities ended. Their limbs terminated in a lengthy tangle of branches, lethally sharp, and their sightless oval heads twisted to and fro on spindly necks. Liara and Alenko's biotics were holding them back, but wherever bullet or warp ripped a hole in the creatures' bodies, acrid green fluid bubbled out onto the floor.

Wherever it fell, it ate miniature craters into the concrete. Shepard groaned. "You've got to be kidding me."

Whatever they were made of, it was exceptionally brittle. Two sweeps of her rifle destroyed their legs and covered the ground in slick, smoking acid. They thrashed on the floor. Another couple of bursts and everything went still and quiet, save for the slow hiss of the creepers' dissolution by their own internal fluids.

Shepard took a breath. "Ok. We want to stay away from the creepy acid-spewing woodmen. Noted."

Alenko checked his heat sink. "This planet just keeps getting better and better."

Liara rubbed her neck. "I think I see another node ahead."

"No choice but to keep going." Shepard took a breath. "Try to toss them over the banister if you can. Punching holes in them should be a last resort. Move out."

The second explosive went in as smoothly as the first. Shepard's arm was caked almost to the shoulder in thorian goop. She was already looking forward to a shower the way sailors longed for dry land.

Another wave of creepers hit just as she was withdrawing her hand. True to her instructions, her squad attempted to herd them out over the pit with the use of their biotics. Shepard, having no such capability, took a more direct approach. She barreled into the nearest creeper and lifted it off its feet.

The creatures weighed nearly nothing, as flimsy and dry as a pile of autumn leaves. Those long claws, however, were razor sharp. They left scratches where they scraped across her armor plating. The hard suit protected her from the worst of the damage, but as she pitched it over the edge, one of its fingers caught in the webbing. She was forced to tear it loose.

The bereft finger twitched once before going still, stiffening as it died. She prised it out with a grunt of irritation. Another one flew at her and she used its own wild rush to help it over the edge. When the dust settled, she realized there were still four of the things curled up on the floor. Waiting.

Shepard tried to pick one up, but for all its lightness, it might as well have been bolted to the floor. She stood back and attempted to shoot it, but apparently hibernation hardened their structure because the only result was a shower of wood chips. _Great. Just great._

Lacking other options, they continued up the structure in the same manner, stuffing the nodes supporting the inert thorian with ordinance and fighting off creepers from front and back. Shepard was arming the eighth node in a moment of relative calm when she saw Liara suddenly stiffen. "What-"

She turned on the spot, just in time to see the green-skinned asari commando float over the guard wall in a bubble of blue light and land lightly on her toes. Her face was full of malice. "We see what you plan. The seedlings have done little to stop you, but it is of no concern. Your flesh will feed the new growth to come."

Shepard was ready for it this time. She raised her rifle and held down the trigger, forcing the asari to sacrifice her attack in favor of a barrier against the barrage. The others joined her. Under the steady stream of gunfire, the commando's strength was fading fast. She ducked around a corner.

The immediate attack as they gave pursuit was expected. What was not anticipated, however, was Liara's counterattack meeting it in midair and causing a titanic explosion that left them all scattered on the floor.

Shepard found her feet and gave herself a quick evaluation. Nothing seemed broken. She leaned down to help Liara up. "What in the hell was that?"

"I readied an attack. There was no time to adjust for her choices."

That was clear as mud. "Let's pretend I'm not an asari biotic."

"It's a mess of poorly understood dark energy theory and wave mechanics," Alenko said. "The important part is some… effects interfere with each other. A barrier can neutralize another biotic attack, for example, or in a different case…"

"Cause an explosion. Right."

He nodded. "It's not all that different from overloading an eezo core, except in the scale."

Liara blinked. "I'm surprised you didn't know. This is considered very basic tactics within the asari military."

Shepard went to check the stairs. The commando was crumpled at the bottom, not moving. She fired two bullets into her back just to be sure. "We've only had our own enlisted biotics for less than fifteen years, and not many of them. Officer training hasn't really caught up yet."

"Isn't that the truth," Alenko muttered under his breath.

Shepard rolled her eyes at the both of them. "I'm learning as fast as I can, ok? It helps when you point out facts like 'can create massive detonation when combined in the correct order'."

Alenko snorted. "I think there's only two or three more nodes left, ma'am."

"Let's blow this place and get the hell out."

Five stories up, they finished rigging the last of the explosives. Shepard took one last long look at the thorian. It had less than zero mobility, but she swore it was glaring up at her with the kind of relentless hatred only a creature dozens of millennia old could muster.

She stared back, recalling the colonists fighting the geth, ragged, worn, and not altogether there. Ian screaming in punishment for attempting to communicate basic intel. Lizbeth shaking in the corridors of ExoGeni, trying to find the right actions in an impossible situation. Fai Dan with a gun to his head.

Just as easily, she could imagine Bakari lying on one of Chakwas' operating tables, cut open, while she labored to close his wounds with a hand that wouldn't work properly, while all the while a crazed colonist threw himself at the hatch, regular meaty thuds punctuating the delicate surgery.

A soft growl rose in her throat as she looked down, more promise than threat. "I'll see you in hell."

Liara called from the back hall. "Shepard, everything's ready. We're just waiting on you."

"Coming." She spat and turned away, making for the stairwell. It would provide some shelter from the catastrophe that was about to take place. The structure was old; Shepard had no idea what would bring it down, but she was about to set off ten charges. Common sense said to stand back from the fragile balconies.

They huddled together over the corpse of Saren's henchman. Shepard activated the detonators.

She thought it would be louder. It was plenty noisy, but not blow-out-her-eardrums loud. Each explosion was punctuated by a wet, pulpy pop. There was a straining groan, as the tension in the vines struggled against gravity, and then a number of snapping sounds as gravity won. Slow at first, and then in rapid staccato as the plant's weight dragged on the remaining supports. The thorian dropped with a whoosh of air, whistling down into the darkness. There was a splat like a million eggs breaking all at once.

Dust rained from the ceiling, turning them all into moths and sending them into coughing fits. Shepard sought the tube of water at her neck, blindly, and gulped it down as her lips sealed around it. Once she had her voice again, she asked, "Everyone ok?"

There was some more coughing. "In one piece, ma'am."

Liara echoed the sentiment. "I'm fine. Is it over?"

"I'm going to find out." Shepard started making her way up through the dust to view her handiwork, when something snaked out of the debris and grabbed her ankle in a death grip. She jumped half a meter, startled, but the hand didn't slacken in the slightest.

The asari groaned. "I'm… I'm free."


	27. Chapter 27

Shepard yanked her foot free, her hand flying to her sidearm. "You're dead!"

"Not quite, though not for lack of trying." The asari groaned again, trying to push herself upright. "Thank the goddess for good equipment."

Liara squatted beside her. "She needs medical attention. Shepard-"

"Do it." She watched as Liara packed the wounds with fresh medigel. Her hardsuit seemed to have checked most of the bullets' momentum, as they didn't penetrate far into the muscles of her back. She was in some pain but there was relatively little lasting damage.

The commando let the wall take her weight and closed her eyes. "Thank you."

"What are you doing here?" Liara demanded.

Her eyes cracked back open as she took Liara in fully for the first time. She blinked. "I don't believe it. Liara T'Soni."

Shepard glanced between them. "You know each other? How?"

"My name is Shiala." She coughed. "I have served Lady Benezia for many years. Of course I recognize her only daughter."

Shepard turned to Liara. "I thought you and your mom didn't talk."

"Shiala was a close confidant, one of my mother's most loyal followers. She has known Benezia longer than I have." Liara gave her a helpless shrug. "She used to keep sweets at her desk for me."

"If your mother could see you here, Liara…" Shiala reached out, stroking Liara's arm.

Liara withdrew, stiff, and very cold. "My mother tried to have me killed on Therum. Don't you dare judge me."

Shiala paled and swallowed. "I heard a rumor like that, while I was aboard the ship. Benezia is not herself. If I could explain-"

"You were with Saren," Shepard stated, interrupting the reunion. "How did you end up inside the thorian?"

"I was a… heh." Her mouth quirked with a dry humor. "An offering. He needed me to act as an intermediary, to get what he wanted, and when he had it Saren left me here."

"Why would you allow him to do that? You know what he's trying to do?"

"Hasten the return of the reapers? Yes." Shiala returned her gaze evenly. "Benezia suspected his ill intent, though not in the specifics, and she volunteered herself in hopes of guiding him down a gentler path. But Saren is… compelling. Benezia lost her way, as did those who followed her into the darkness."

Shepard snorted, disgusted. "Dress it up however you like. Benezia chose to follow Saren."

"That is an oversimplification. Benezia underestimated the magnitude of Saren's persuasion. We all did." She adjusted her position against the wall, gasping as it raked over her wounds. "The strength of his influence is… troubling."

Alenko glanced at the commander. "Looks like the matriarch got in over her head."

"She tried to turn the river and instead was swept away." Liara hugged herself, staring at the floor.

Shepard shook her head. "Asari matriarchs are renowned for their wisdom and presence of mind. How does one mad turian spectre take control of her?"

"It's not Saren. He…" Shiala looked up at Shepard from the floor. "Are you familiar with his dreadnought?"

"He had it on Eden Prime. Resembles a wasp, emits pink lightening? What about it?"

"He calls it Sovereign. If you have seen it, then you know it dwarfs any ship in any fleet. It is utterly alien. I do not know how he came by it, but know this- it possesses some kind of strange technology capable of dominating the minds of his followers. More than that- you feel… drawn to the ship."

"That's insane. How is anything like that possible?"

"Whether it is electrical, chemical, biological, I do not know. The process is remarkably subtle. It can take days, weeks for the strongest minds, but it is inevitable. Anyone brought aboard the ship becomes indoctrinated, a willing servant of Saren's agenda. His hold is absolute."

Shepard stared at her. A small smile touched her lips. "You seem shocked, Commander."

"More like I've just wandered into a Lovecraft story." She ran a hand over her hair. "Alright, assuming for the moment that what you say is accurate, how does this bring you to Feros?"

"I was a slave when Saren brought me here, and a glad one." Shiala looked down at her lap, a blush of shame. "He needed my biotics to communicate with the thorian. My people are experts in the exchange of information, mind-to-mind, and the thorian was a mind without a tongue."

Alenko paced along the back of the stairwell. "I still don't get it. What did Saren want from the thorian?"

"A secret belonging to those long dead. One valuable enough to trade away an asari commando with powerful biotic capabilities."

Liara's head snapped up, grief, anger, and sheer disbelief painted on her face. "My mother stood by and allowed you to be sacrificed? _You_? _This _is what he did to her?"

Shepard lay a hand on her shoulder, gently. "This isn't the time. Shiala- enough with the evasive rhetoric. What did you give Saren?"

She sighed, and stretched out her legs, seeming to search for words. "We called it the cipher. It is difficult to explain. Saren learned during your meeting with the Council that you had also accessed the vision stored within the beacon on Eden Prime. From your actions, he deduced that you, too, failed to make sense of it."

"So Saren has no idea what it means either." That was a gift. Always trailing at least one step behind, it never occurred to Shepard that Saren might be floundering just as much. _Maybe it's time we stopped chasing him and started thinking for ourselves._

"The beacons were meant for a Prothean mind. To understand their content, one must think like a Prothean- understand their culture, their history, what it meant to _be _a Prothean in the same way you understand instinctively what it is to be human."

"And the thorian had tens of thousands of years of dwelling inside Prothean minds."

"Precisely. The cipher is a way to tap into that endemic racial memory, a viewpoint spanning thousands of generations, that which made Protheans distinct and whole." Shiala's green eyes flicked away from hers. "That is what the thorian gave to me, and I in turn gave Saren."

Alenko stopped pacing. "Then the geth were just an insurance policy."

Shepard felt her heart sink. "Saren knew we were searching for him. He had the geth try to destroy the thorian so we couldn't negotiate for the cipher ourselves." _And the colony along with it._

"It's just as well." Liara leaned against the wall. "I can't say that I like the idea of being a plant's thrall for the next nine hundred years."

Shiala smiled, humorlessly. "It is not a fate to be envied."

Shepard steeled herself for what was coming next. "You taught Saren, you can teach me."

Liara started. "Commander, she taught Saren by melding with his mind. You-"

"I know what I'm asking."

"After the way you reacted the last time-"

Her face was hot. "Can we please not talk about that? Ever again, if at all possible?"

Alenko's brow scrunched up. "Wait. You and her…"

"It wasn't like that!" Shepard felt she couldn't make this worse if she tried. "That damned vision wasn't letting me sleep, we were in the middle of a siege, and I didn't have a lot of options."

Shiala's patience wore thin. "It may be an uncomfortable process for the unfamiliar, particularly those individuals who are… strongly independent. But it is harmless. I cannot, however, be responsible for the impact of the information conveyed."

"If Saren has it, I need it." She took a breath. "Are you strong enough to do it now?"

The asari nodded, curtly. "Help me to my feet."

Shepard hauled her to standing. She steadied herself against the wall a moment, before giving up and leaning her weight against it. "Stand before me. Closer. There."

The commander found her gaze darting to the ceiling, to Liara off to the side, to her armor, anywhere but the asari's face, as the injured woman placed her hands on each of Shepard's shoulders. There was a touch of amusement in her voice. "I need you to look at me, Commander."

"Right." She took a deep breath and dragged her eyes to Shiala's.

"Try to relax. Open your mind to the possibilities that surround us. Every idea must touch another mind to live."

"Yeah, I got this the first time around. 'Embrace eternity'."

"Shhh." Her smooth, enthralling tone never varied. "It is necessary to properly prepare your mind for the joining. Close your eyes."

Shepard did as she asked, trying to stop her skin crawling, trying to forget her armor was caked in thorian ick, that she hadn't slept in a couple of days, that Saren had once again vanished and the continuity of civilization might just hang on whether she could find him. Her mind closed to the dirty stairwell, the faint tang of blood from Shiala's injuries and the bitter smell of medigel, Alenko's nervous pacing and Liara's smothering concern. Her awareness narrowed to the asari's hypnotic words, the feel of her hands and the intensity of her gaze, a subtle pressure even with her own vision closed off.

"Slow, deep breaths." Shiala stepped closer still. "Let go your physical shell. Reach out to grasp the threads that bind us, one to another. We are all connected, every living being united in a single, glorious existence. Open yourself to the universe."

Her face was now so close Shepard could feel the heat radiating off it. The commander couldn't have pulled away at this point if she tried. Shiala's breath brushed her cheek. "Embrace eternity."

Shepard opened her eyes. She was standing across from Benezia's acolyte in a darkened cave. Shiala's hands were cupped around the sole light in the chamber, a luminescent ball of swirling green and gold. She craned her neck to get a better look at their surroundings. For all the world, it resembled nothing so much as a novelty rock she'd bought from a tourist trap on Terra Nova when she was ten- hemispherical and glittering with shadowed crystals.

Not much was visible beyond the short radius of Shiala's light. From the depths of the cave came a sudden shriek, causing Shepard to turn and reach automatically for a weapon that was not there.

Shiala spoke calmly, the depths of the place swallowing her voice. "Pay it no mind. They're not looking for you."

"This doesn't look like the last time."

"Unless I'm much mistaken, on that occasion Liara entered your mind." Her eyes, Shepard noticed, were violet here, not the odd green of the real world. "On this occasion, I have pulled you into mine- because the knowledge you require resides here."

She glanced down at her ball of light and then back up at Shepard. More sounds echoed from the distant reaches, ripping and tearing punctuated by the occasional cry of pain, though she could see nothing. The commander was thoroughly unnerved.

Shiala's mouth turned up at one corner, though there was nothing of warmth or pleasure in the expression. "I don't need to tell you that sometimes the price of our kind of life is very high."

Shepard recalled the locked and reinforced doors lining the halls of her own mental sanctuary, and took her advice to block it out. "Let's do this."

The asari held out the light. In its depths, Shepard could see fleeting images and detect scraps of sound, but everything vanished too quickly to make out clearly. When she reached for it, Shiala drew it back a moment. "This is not the sort of gift you will thank me for."

"I understand."

"It is the experience of an entire people, a race dead for fifty thousand years. The responsibility of keeping such a thing is immense."

"I'm in this too deep to back out now. Using this… memory to protect the galaxy from suffering what happened to them feels right."

Shiala held out the cipher, and Shepard took it.

Her mind was enveloped.

There was no making sense of it. None of the cipher represented coherent, logical, or structured thought. It was impressions, nuance, feeling, understanding- all those things her storied military career had taught her to put aside in a crisis, the best wisdom being that emotional involvement only interfered with making decisions which were quick and correct. Some of it felt familiar, though it was streaming by at an eye-watering speed that made it difficult to form associations with her own experiences. At the same time the impressions imbedded in the cipher were utterly alien, not merely straining her frame of reference or imagination, but something so entirely beyond it as to be almost impossible to assimilate.

The transfer of the cipher from Shiala to Shepard seemed to take a small eternity. But it was only a few scant seconds before Shepard's eyes flew open and she stumbled back from the asari. Disoriented, the stairs caught the back of her ankles and she would have fallen over if Alenko hadn't grabbed her arm. "Commander, are you alright?"

"I… I saw something. Give me a second." She took a deep breath, not caring that it was choked with dust from the charges. Shiala scrutinized her with a once-more green-eyed gaze. Shepard returned it with bewilderment. "It still doesn't make any sense."

"It will take time for your mind to process the information, but it will help. I promise you that."

Liara took a hesitant step towards her. "We should take you back to the ship, where you can be monitored."

"The hell am I spending the next few days being prodded in medbay." She staggered up the stairs, leaning on the wall. "Somebody radio the _Normandy _and see if the colonists have backed down."

Alenko seemed to share Liara's concerns. "Commander, ma'am, maybe it wouldn't be the worst idea-"

"I'm fine," she half-snarled, and continued to drag herself up the stairs to get a look at what she'd done, ignoring all offers of help or solace. Shiala's cipher continued to burn bright within her mind, much as the asari's critical eyes burned into her back, all the way up.

/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\

After much cajoling and coercion, Shepard finally relented to Chakwas' learned care. The iron-haired doctor pushed the scanner away with wry amusement. "You've taken no serious injuries, though in my professional opinion a hot shower wouldn't go awry. I'd suggest you take it easy the next few weeks, but…"

"You know I'll just ignore it, and there's not enough wrong with me to keep me here under duress."

"Oh, there is something very wrong with you, Commander." Her lively blue eyes hinted at a laugh. "But I don't believe it's anything pills or sutures are likely to cure."

Shepard had to laugh herself. It was true, for a certain value of honesty, anyway. "And the colonists?"

"A few lacerations and contusions from the idiocy they were displaying outside, nothing too serious. The thorian was apparently so furious with you that it took no care to protect the colonists from themselves."

Shepard shrugged. "What can I say? I have a gift."

Chakwas tutted, moving along to the next subject. "I have been unable to determine what is amiss with the asari. Such a pronounced change in pigmentation usually signals some kind of serious nutrient imbalance or organ deterioration, but I've found no signs of either. I suggested she seek the advice of an asari medical expert, but she's nearly as stubborn as you."

Shepard glanced out the medbay windows, where Shiala and Davin Reynolds were deep in conversation. "She's determined to stay and help the colony. She feels what happened was partially her fault."

"Short-sighted, but admirable."

"Maybe." Shepard couldn't have said she would not have done the same. Even without- maybe especially without- the thorian's enforced lassitude, there really was an aura of peace and hope about the place. The men and women who chose to plant their lives and families here didn't seem so crazy after all. It was as much of a fresh start as any human was ever likely to see. "It sounds nuts, but I kind of envy them, just a little."

Chakwas followed her gaze. "I tried to settle down once. It didn't take. Something in me needs the stars, the adventure… and I always feel as though every second I spend in comfort back on Earth or some colony, someone up here is going without my help. Space is where the Alliance needs doctors."

"I know exactly what you mean."

"If we can spare the time, I believe the surviving colonists from across the skyway are planning to bring take the shuttle fleet back to Zhu's Hope and have a bit of a celebration."

"Oh, we're staying." Shepard grinned. "We've earned a little R&R."

She took the doctor's advice and spent the better part of an hour showering away every last spec of grime from the last week and a half. Dirt came with the territory, but there was no better feeling than being freshly scrubbed afterwards. Walking back to Zhu's Hope without her hardsuit and only a sidearm for protection felt strange in a good way. Late afternoon was fading into early evening. Around Zhu's Hope, the colonists were lighting bonfires and breaking out better stores brought over from the main colony on the first of the shuttles. People were huddled in small groups, talking and embracing as families and friends were reunited.

Most of the _Normandy _crew was already there. The majority were settled around their own fire, but more than a few were mixing with the colonists, exchanging stories and good wishes. Feros was going to leave a lasting mark on all of them. Shepard was glad it was a happy one.

"Commander Shepard." Juliana Baynham rushed over, shoved a drink her hand, and gave her a warm hug.

Taken aback by the unexpected show of affection, Shepard shuffled the drink to her other hand to return the embrace. "Juliana. It's good to see you in one piece."

"After you left, Jeong got a little- ah- testy." Juliana smiled. "Then we were hit hard by a party of retreating geth. Without your people, I'm not sure we would have made it. I think having his own skin on the line went a long way towards changing his mind."

"You're going to have to be cautious for awhile. With their ship destroyed, any geth left here have no place to go."

"You don't think Saren will be back for them?"

"No. They were expendable." And now that she had the cipher, Saren had no reason to continue breaking the might of his army against the cunning will of the thorian, whatever was left it. She doubted very much the destruction of a single node belonging to something that ancient and evil erased it forever.

"Shepard." Garrus sauntered over, accompanied by Tali, brimming with smug satisfaction. He stuck out his hand. "Heard you got what you needed."

She gripped it a long moment, a gesture of easy camaraderie. "Heard you finally got yourself a real fight."

"It got pretty hairy there for a bit. But then our Tali had some kind of epiphany and got them to freeze."

Tali scuffled her toe in the dirt, a bodily blush. "It wasn't very complicated. I wired the destroyer's memory core into their radio and broadcast an order to surrender."

Garrus crossed his arms, leaning back on his heels. "After that all we had to do was mow them down. Just like target practice."

Shepard blinked. "With the jamming signals down, you might have reached every geth in the colony."

"I wouldn't want to stake my life on it, but… maybe." Tali hastened to add, "I doubt it will work again. The geth weren't destroyed instantaneously. I'm certain they were relaying the nonsensical command electronically, and the next geth we meet will have patched their security."

"Gotta love instant updates. Hell of a thing, regardless."

Juliana wasn't finished. "And there's more- Jeong called his bosses and revealed what happened. They're relieved the thorian is dead- but excited about the study and the samples we preserved. As long as you keep the discovery quiet with the Systems Alliance, this colony will have all the funding it could ever need."

She raised an eyebrow. "The Zhu's Hope group doesn't want to press charges? Or at least file a lawsuit?"

"According to Davin, they just want to get on with their lives."

Shepard thought it over a moment. "Alright. As long as Jeong's not strong-arming them, it's not my decision to make." She gave Juliana a nod. "I'm going to find something to eat."

The most she had in three days was a couple of protein bars on the shuttle over, and now that the adrenaline was draining out of her system she was ravenous.

Garrus jerked his head towards the shipping yard. "I think someone over there is cooking actual food, none of the rehydrated crap, if you're interested. Tali and I are stuck with what's back on the ship."

Shepard grimaced. "I'm sorry."

"Don't worry," Tali reassured her. "I've got an entire box of dextro pulled taffy from the last time we were on the Citadel. We thought it was time we broke it out."

"And I've got a bottle of rye from Taetrus." The turian grinned. "Don't worry, Shepard. We're not missing out."

/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\

The sun was settled low on the horizon when the last of the colonists arrived and the party really got going. For the _Normandy _crew, there from the start, things were already in full swing.

"-and then Chase fricking LEAPS over the barrier, and slams the butt of her rifle right in that thing's flashlight." The marine pantomimed smashing the geth. "That robot never saw it coming."

There was laughter. Alenko observed, dryly, "I'm pretty sure Chase didn't see it coming either."

Addison Chase, the marine in question, went bright red as the good-natured laughter increased. "Hey, I definitely knew it was there before I jumped the barrier. My reflexes are catlike."

"Catlike. Right." Private Crosby snorted. "More like the time my wife got our cat declawed and it bumbled around the house, falling off when it tried to jump on things-"

"So pretty much like every time you come home on shore leave?" she shot back.

His response was drowned out in more laughter and catcalls. Talitha Draven, who was sitting back against Rosamund's knees, tilted her head back with an accusatory glare. "You said it was boring."

Corporal Rosamund Draven eyed Ensign Draven, who was a technology specialist in engineering and had not left the _Normandy _at any point during the siege, with a certain amount of spousal trepidation. "There may have been a few brief moments of excitement."

"That sounds like something Shepard would say- guns down a half dozen geth and then complains about the inconvenience and interruption." Williams rolled her eyes. "Where the hell is Shepard, anyway?"

They glanced around the fire. The commander's quiet absence was suddenly quite conspicuous. Crosby said, "I thought I saw her slink off after dinner. I thought she was coming right back, but…"

"She probably got waylaid by some of the colonists," Alenko reasoned. "I'll go see if I can extract her."

He got up and left the warmth and noise of _Normandy's _fire. It didn't take long to check the other groups scattered around Zhu's Hope and determine Shepard was not sitting with any of them. He managed to raise Garrus back on the ship, who informed him in an only slightly slurred statement that Shepard was not aboard.

He probably should have let it go at that. It was far more likely that she simply didn't want to be found than anything nefarious was afoot. But tonight was a victory, and they hadn't experienced very many of those since taking on this mission. It seemed wrong that the commander shouldn't be enjoying their well-earned celebration.

_She doesn't sleep well. She probably just fell into the first quiet corner she stumbled across, and I'll find her passed out somewhere. _Still, he started asking around, and eventually his search led him to the roof of the ruins, six stories up, where he found Shepard propped up against a retrofit shed with a fifth of tequila in hand, watching the sun go down.

She glanced at him without much surprise as he emerged from the stairwell. "Hey."

Not quite sure how to begin, he went with triviality. "Your absence is starting to draw attention."

"Clearly." She chuckled, and held out the bottle. "Care to join me?"

"I'm more of a whiskey guy." It didn't stop him from settling down beside her, folding his arms over his knees.

She took a draw from the bottle and grimaced. "Probably a smart call. There's never any decent tequila around when you need it."

He gave it a glance. It was already a quarter empty. "Where the hell did you get a bottle of tequila on this rock anyway?"

"Traded one of the scientists for it." She contemplated the bottle. "Apparently, it's considerably easier to go along with corrupt and unethical experiments on non-consenting human beings if you're just a little bit sloshed."

"Ah, the old 'don't ask me, I was drunk' defense."

"I hear it works pretty well with admirals too."

"I'm not so sure about that one." He paused, watching the sun slip down another fraction. It was strange. Aboard ship, you got used to stars coming and going sometimes within an hour. But somehow the experience was completely transformed by being down on the surface of a world, where the passage of the sun was the ultimate timekeeper going back to the ancient days.

"Hell of a day," he finally said. "You wanted a homerun, and you sure as hell got one, ma'am."

"Yes I did." Her smile was incredibly satisfied. "We caught up with Saren, we closed the door on an egregious violation of colonial law, saved an entire colony, and even killed the monster terrorizing the village. But you know what the best part is?"

"What's that?"

She snickered. "When we get back to the Citadel, Udina's going to have to face a bank of cameras and smile as he shakes my hand. It may just kill him."

He chuckled and shook his head. "We can only hope. I have to say though, you're missing one heck of a party. It's really your party. None of this would have happened without you."

Her mirth faded, and she took another pull from the bottle. "Just… thinking, that's all. About this cipher and what the hell is happening out here."

Alenko waited a moment for her to continue before prodding. "Want to talk about it?"

"I'm not sure I can explain it."

"Doesn't hurt to try."

"I'm not sure it's the kind of thing a commanding officer should be discussing with her lieutenant," she clarified.

He shrugged. "We're off-duty."

"We're never off-duty."

"Well, if we're on duty, ma'am, technically you're drinking in uniform."

Shepard glanced again at the bottle. "…point taken."

He settled in to wait, raising his eyebrows at her. "So? Let's have it."

She slouched back against the shed and sighed. The silence stretched to the point where he almost gave her an out, not wanting to make her uncomfortable. Then she started to speak, rather abruptly. "About ten months ago I applied for a posting at ICT. Their instructor for an N4 course retired. Infiltration and reconnaissance, how to get in, find your target, and get out clean. I thought I might be a good fit."

"Teaching? Really?" Alenko couldn't have been more astonished if she suggested she wanted to join the Marine Corps Band. "I can't decide if I'm more surprised by that or the fact that they apparently turned you down."

"Admiral Zahavy thanked me for my interest and told me to come back when I was forty." She snorted. "Asshole."

He was still lost. "Why? I mean, why apply in the first place?"

She set down the bottle and looked up at the sky. The last ruby rays were fading into purple twilight. Her face was in shadows. "After Akuze I really did feel like a ghost. I mean, I didn't have a death wish or anything melodramatic like that. I felt like I didn't inhabit the same reality as everyone else anymore. Stuff that was important before, commendations, navy turf wars, friends bickering about bad postings or ill-timed leaves, even my own fiancé just seemed so impossibly petty and small. Life was short. Get the mission done, get back and grab whatever cheap happiness you could, and go back out again. It seemed the only sensible way to live in a universe that screwed up and random."

"That was five years ago."

"Almost six."

"Alright, six. You said you wanted out ten months ago." The light bulb went off. There was only one subject on which she was this evasive. "This doesn't have anything to do with that other mission? The one that you'd spend the next twenty years in Vancouver lock-up for telling me about?"

She gave him an even look. "You sure you want to hear this? It makes you liable too."

Alenko wasn't sure what made him answer affirmatively. The navy took breaches of classified information very seriously. This simply felt more important than the potential consequences. "No, but I'll listen anyway."

Shepard blew out a breath. "Our drive core got shot out from under us. We were stranded on the edges of batarian space, which is why the cavalry wasn't exactly coming over the hill. Don't ask me what we were doing out there because I'm not going to tell you, but the long and short of it is the six of us were looking at a five-day mission turning into a three or four month mission without any warning."

"That had to be a tiny ship to be stuck on for that long." He could imagine how it went. They wouldn't have been prepared or provisioned for an assignment of that duration. There wouldn't have been anywhere to get away from each other or what was happening. "It would've messed anyone up. You can't beat yourself up over that."

"It wasn't what happened that messed me up." She traced the label with a fingertip, averting her gaze. "It was the realization that even if I somehow cheated the long odds yet again, out of all of us I was the only one that had absolutely nothing worth going home to except the opportunity to do it again."

"That's not true. I mean, you have your mom and dad at least."

"Having parents who are going to cry at your funeral isn't the same thing as having a life." She shook her head. "Hell, if I did die even my parents would talk about how dedicated I was to my duty, just like the official eulogy. There's not much else to say."

He knew what she meant, but he hated hearing her voice it. "You say that like it's a bad thing. You love this job. Doing our duty, doing it well- that's the highest aspiration of people in our line of work."

"Yeah." She gave him a half-hearted smile. "The problem is that's all I ever do. I wasn't asking for the ICT posting because I was tired of doing this. I was asking for it because I was trying to get myself to a place where I could have some kind of real life."

"Everyone in the navy struggles with that," he said, trying for reassuring. "It's not easy no matter where you're posted."

"Maybe I needed it to be just a little easier. I don't know if that's spec ops or if it's just me, but I couldn't do it without a little circumstantial help."

"Ok." He thought about it. "So what does that have to do with this cipher thing?"

"Some of it's starting to make sense." Shepard looked over at him. "This isn't the first time this has happened. The reapers have destroyed civilization over and over and over again. Every fifty thousand years, like clockwork, going back god knows how long. They storm in and wipe everything out."

He stared. "That's insane. You've only had this thing a few hours. Surely-"

"You can believe whatever you like, Kaidan, it's true." She hugged her knees up to her chest, copying his posture, and rested her chin on them. "And there's this- it didn't happen fast. The Protheans struggled against the reapers for hundreds of years. You can't imagine the kind of force I'm seeing in this beacon warning, and I can't begin to describe it. It's coming for us, now. Even if we stop Saren it's still coming. All we're fighting for is a chance to push back the schedule and gain more time to prepare."

Alenko took a few minutes to process that, and decided that for the moment legitimacy didn't matter. "Alright, leaving aside whether or not that is accurate, what about it has you on top of a crumbling building drinking yourself blind on bad tequila?"

"Because this is it." She gestured out at the landscape, with a derisive sound. "This is going to be the rest of my life, fighting this war. I can't not do it without changing everything that I am. There's not going to be a, a pet, or a home, or a partner or even a fricking book club. This is it and there's never going to be anything more."

She paused a moment. "I mean, I don't even have a potted plant. I had a cactus once. But it died."

Alenko tried to swallow it, but a laugh escaped anyway. She gave him a withering look. "You're doing a really terrific job of being supportive here."

"I'm sorry." He bit his lip to gain a measure of self-control. "I'm sorry, but I'm just picturing this sad, brown, dried up saguaro sitting on a windowsill on Arcturus waiting for you to come home."

"That's… disturbingly close to what happened." She laughed despite herself, even if it was a touch rueful. "Look, I know this sounds… less than… whatever I'm supposed to be. I'm not regretful. In some ways it's even a relief because now I can stop trying to make it more than it is. And I'm going to keep kicking reaper ass in every way available as long as I have feet."

Shepard ran a hand over her hair. "I'm just saying, if some oracle came to me at seventeen and laid it all out, I'm not absolutely certain this is what I would've chosen."

"Look, when you were seventeen, you were dying your hair bright blue and stealing parts out of cars," he pointed out. "Experience changes your perspective. Even with foresight, it probably still would've looked like an exciting adventure."

She chuckled, rubbing her forehead, at a loss. "I don't think that blue-haired girl would even recognize me, carefully stepping around the sensibilities of four different species and giving politically respectful interviews."

"I don't know." He tilted his head back, taking in the sky, not wanting to say the wrong thing. The first of the stars were starting to come out. "I think instead of dying her hair, she pulls out electrical cables to fry synthetic hostiles while standing in a pool of water. Instead of turning cartwheels on ANN, she flips the bird at turian leadership in open Council sessions. She didn't change. She grew up and her battles got a little bigger, that's all."

Shepard, too, turned her gaze upwards. It was too dark to make out her expression, and a long time before she answered. "You know, that may be the nicest thing anyone's said to me in a very long time."

He smiled in the dark. "Well, I'm glad calling you a pain in the ass makes you feel better, ma'am."

"Hey, I've cultivated that aura of assholery. It's harder than it looks." She turned her head and grinned at him, laying her cheek against her knees. "So what about you? I find it hard to believe Lieutenant Alenko doesn't have anything waiting for him back in port."

It was Alenko's turn to be evasive. "Nah. Nothing like that."

"Extended deployment is that big a deal-breaker?"

He let out a sigh tinged with exasperation. "I don't know. Everything will go great for a few weeks, then they start telling me that I'm 'emotionally unavailable' and it's not going to work." He made a face. "Emotionally unavailable. What does that even mean?"

"It means that you're defensive and you don't give people ready access to what you're thinking or feeling." Shepard was bemused.

"I'm a private person."

"I think it's your business who you choose to share things with. I like my privacy too." She shrugged, and started searching around for the tequila again. "But on the other hand, you're wound up tighter than the tensile spring under _Normandy's _main battery. It wouldn't kill you to relax a little."

He snorted. "That's pot calling kettle if I ever heard it."

She waved the bottle at him before taking another swig. "Speak for yourself. I'm the one who's drinking."

"Oh, go to hell, ma'am," he said, crossly. She snickered, but offered no further comment.

Then, after a moment, he rolled his eyes held out his hand.

Shepard laughed and passed him the tequila.

/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\

It took awhile for Feros' sun to climb high enough to reach around the storage shed erected by the colonists and reach the two slumbering marines slumped against it.

They stirred at nearly the same time. Shepard leaned forward and cradled her forehead in her hand, and groaned. "Why?"

Alenko rubbed the sand from his eyes and took a glance at the now-empty fifth. "Well, you did drink most of it."

She put her head between her knees. "Oohhh, today is gonna suck."

He tried not to laugh. Her uniform was rumpled past any decent excuse, she had a rough, angry scrape painted across her cheek, and her long red hair was half-falling out of its bun. The sun caught the wispy fly-aways as she tried to smooth them back into order, to make some order of her appearance before they headed back to the ship and look a little more like a C.O. and a little less like a marine who had been up all night drinking.

Shepard gave him a highly affronted glare. "This isn't funny."

"Of course not, ma'am." He bit his tongue against every teasing retort that rose up and tried to slip through.

She took in his carefully neutral expression, made a sound of exasperation, and resumed adjusting her clothing.

He watched her fuss, and tried not to think all the things that were running through his mind. Alenko would be lying if he said the notion never occurred to him. He'd entertained the occasional idle daydream. Who wouldn't? Shepard had strength, grace, brains, and legs all the way up to there. The more this mission dragged on, the more appreciation he gained for just how much shit she was forced to wade to accomplish anything. Alenko admired the hell out of her for sticking with it all the same, though it was equally undeniable that those long legs and red hair of hers sometimes played more of a starring role than her tenacity.

There were over three hundred clearly defined statutes in the Systems Alliance Navy Uniform Code of Military Justice. Most of them were relatively obscure, or sufficiently overlapping with either day-to-day protocol or common sense as to be understood implicitly. A few, however, were hammered into the brains of every recruit who passed through Alliance basic training. Regulation 218 stated in no uncertain terms the consequences for fraternization, particularly in a time war, between soldiers within a chain of command. Couples or spouses who served on the same ship were not terribly uncommon; the _Normandy _even had their own pair, Rosamund and Talitha. But they served in different areas and were not subject to taking orders from each other in the normal course of events.

Alenko answered to Shepard directly. They worked together closely, under the most serious of circumstances, the outright attack of several human colonies by a rogue army from beyond the Terminus systems. They fought together, they relied on each other, and neither of them would be able to fully execute their duty under that kind of distraction. It was the textbook reason for 218's existence. There was no excuse.

Idle daydreams were one thing. But sitting on the roof, taking in his charmingly disheveled commander in the early morning light, recalling how forlorn she sounded the evening before and the way it echoed his occasional doubts about his own life, they didn't feel quite so idle or so innocent. And Lieutenant Alenko realized, abruptly, that he had a very, very big problem.


	28. Chapter 28

"You're enjoying this a little too much, Shepard," Udina stated through clenched teeth as the journalists' automatic cameras snapped away.

"Anything to show the good people of the Alliance the unity of their government, sir," Shepard shot back under her breath as she grasped his hand, her fixed smile never wavering.

The sheer hatred in the ambassador's eyes warmed her heart. If she was pissing off the politicos, she knew they were doing something right. Udina finished up his remarks on their courageous rescue of the Feros colony, the galaxy's gratitude, and so forth, while she held her hands behind her back and surreptitiously wiped his slime off on her palm. Once more, Shepard found herself shined up for display, but by now the point had come, as it did in every long mission, where the accumulated damage was starting to show. She had a collection of scattered bruises where her kinetic shields had failed, the angry scrape up her cheekbone remained fresh, and a general achiness of body that would not fully subside until after a week or two of leave once this was over.

Udina, by contrast, was outfitted in one of his usual expensively tailored suits without a strand of his thinning hair out of place, as removed from the reality of this war as it was possible to be. The commander had to question whether he ever found himself on the business end of a fight in all his life. He concluded the small speech with a perfunctory round of applause for _Normandy's _efforts, and then it was time for a few questions.

The respect the reporters showed Udina was unexpected. They didn't shout or press up against him, shoving their recording devices in his face. Part of that was undoubtedly the venue, a charmingly small garden not far from his offices in the Presidium lending the event a formal air, but part of it was Udina himself and the relationship he established with the press. Shepard admitted to a touch of envy and wondered how he'd done it. They showed her no such courtesy.

He pointed at a man in the crowd accompanied by a hovering camera plastered with sponsor logos. The man glanced down at his datapad. "Mr. Ambassador, Frank Dunney, ANN. Do you have any comment on whether the Council plans to extend any safeguards to the corporations suffering in the wake of the halt on Attican colonization?"

Udina cleared his throat and leaned forward on his podium. "The Council's official statement is that humanity was aware of the risks when we went into the Traverse. However, they are monitoring the situation closely and have no desire for a significant segment of our economy to collapse. For the moment Parliament's offer of short-term loans is doing the trick."

Between official Alliance space and the Traverse, humanity was building a nice buffer between the batarians and the rest of the galaxy. The Council would never allow that shield to fail entirely. But Shepard didn't realize the colonization situation had deteriorated that much. It had now been nearly ten weeks since Saren's unprovoked attack on Eden Prime.

The ANN reporter had a follow-up. "And what do you think about the colonists who are emigrating back to Earth? There have been reports that some of the smaller colonies are all but emptied."

Shepard blinked at that, but buried the remainder of her reaction. _People are so frightened that they're abandoning their homes?_

She didn't think about Saren like that. He was a challenge, an enemy, something to loathe. His actions frustrated and angered her, but it had never occurred to her to be afraid. If Shepard were a colonist, she'd be waiting in her hab with a shotgun and god help any geth who came her way. Home, for those lucky enough to find it, ought to be one of the inviolate pillars of the world.

Meanwhile, Udina responded to the question with an easy chuckle. The sound fit him like a dress on a porcupine. "I hope they locked their doors before they left. As soon as this situation is resolved, they'll be back. Right now, what we need is calm and resolve. Fleeing in a panic only opens us to more risk."

A young woman Shepard recognized from the crush of reporters assaulting her on her last visit raised her hand. Udina pointed at her. "Yes, Miss al-Jilani."

"Khalisah Bint Sinan al-Jilani, Westerlund News. This one is for Commander Shepard." Her VI camera fixed its light on Shepard, who stared into it passively. "We were all shocked to hear your confirmation that a turian spectre, Saren Arterius, is behind these heinous attacks. What do you say to those who claim sending the Citadel's least experienced spectre after one of their most celebrated is an attempt to portray humanity as incompetent, or allow Arterius' activities to continue?"

"That's a load of bullcrap."

"I'm sorry, Commander?"

"I said that's a load of bullcrap." Shepard addressed her steadily. "Having rogue elements within their organization doesn't strengthen the Council. They want Saren brought in. He's broken our laws, he's broken galactic laws by collaborating with synthetics, and he's broken natural law by the massacre of thousands of our citizens for personal gain. Nobody in this government is his friend."

"No offense, Commander, but can you honestly say that sending you isn't just a token bone to the Council's least favorite species?"

"Racism cuts both ways, Miss al-Jilani," Shepard said crisply. "A turian, salarian, or even asari spectre wouldn't receive the same amount of cooperation from our colonists. We could all do better when it comes to bias. Additionally, I know these colonies. I've spent ten years of my life defending them. That's not nothing."

"Are you calling human colonists racists?"

Udina, growing nervous, decided to step in. "I'm certain Commander Shepard shares my sentiment that-"

Shepard overrode him. "I'm saying it's common to fear the unfamiliar, and in the last twenty-six years there's been more tension and misunderstanding than solidarity and diplomacy, on every side. Trust takes time to build. We've been a part of this community for less than a generation. I don't blame people for being uncertain or anxious, but I would ask for a little faith."

"So you approve of the Council standing by-"

"Miss al-Jilani, yes or no," Shepard broke in, maintaining control of the conversation. "If these were turian colonies and Parliament announced that we were sending a fleet and aid packages, would you not this very moment be railing against the use of Alliance tax dollars to support such an effort?"

She raised her eyebrows. The reporter scowled. "Commander, I will not permit my perfectly valid question to be diverted by non-sequiturs. The people have a right to know whose side you're on."

"Yes or no?"

Al-Jilani was silent. Shepard gave her a comforting smile and adopted a somewhat warmer tone. "Sometimes the pace of progress is downright glacial. I should know. These days I spend half my time beating my forehead against it. You might have caught a little of that from my remarks in the open Council session several weeks ago."

There was laughter. She continued, "But we're living in a galaxy of complexity and nuance that's way too big to do credit in unilateral statements. And that's something men like Saren Arterius will never understand. I know because I've met his kind before- cretins who hide behind masks of terror and despair hoping fear will do most of the their work for them, because they know it's the only chance they've got."

Shepard took a breath. "Where I stand is between the pioneers and scientists and farmers and all the other courageous individuals who have chosen to spend their lives settling the galaxy, and those who have chosen to betray it. And I would've given the exact same answer before I was appointed as a spectre."

Udina finally managed to get a word in edgewise. "I believe that's all our time for today. Thank you again for your attention, and may these unfortunate events be swiftly brought to closure."

A few reporters shouted questions as they departed, but Udina hustled Shepard away before there was any chance of a response. His grip on her arm was painfully tight. "You can't just spout off like that."

"Evidently you're mistaken, because I just did."

"You're the proverbial bull in a china shop. You don't have the faintest idea what you are doing." He yanked her into a side hall and paused for breath. "You were supposed to be vetted. Not just in combat alongside Nihlus, but in the company of serious people. You were supposed to be ready before we turned you loose in Citadel politics."

"Let me tell you something, ambassador." She jabbed a finger at his chest. "Saren's got a fleet and it is filled with soldiers who do not fear and do not tire. He won't stop at humanity. The time is coming when the Council is going to have to say yes, for their sake as much as ours, and when that moment comes I don't want our own stubborn pride to have made it impossible for them to do so."

"I recall you telling me that politics was my job."

"People are fleeing their homes, and you stood up there and called it an unfortunate event. The word you were seeking is war." Shepard's calm tone never rose above the temperature of liquid hydrogen. "Let go of my arm before I make you let go."

He released her with an expression of pure contempt. "Captain Anderson is waiting for you back at the embassy."

The commander straightened her jacket, offered the ambassador a cold nod, and departed.

She passed a taxi stand, but elected to continue on foot. Anger wasn't a problem; if anything, Shepard felt she'd finally won a round with the press and Udina both. It was a fifteen minute walk back to the human embassy, or a five minute cab ride, and fifteen minutes without any small talk, altercations, or company aside from her private thoughts appealed to her sanity.

Shepard garnered a few stares as she made her way through the late afternoon Presidium throng. It was increasingly difficult to go unrecognized anywhere, but especially here, at the heart of the galaxy.

_Well, let them watch. _Two salarians who leaned in to whisper with each other as she passed were affronted when Shepard offered them a cavalier wave. It wasn't polite to acknowledge gossip. She didn't care about that either. Discomfiting people who viewed her work largely as a form of entertainment strayed awfully close to fun.

In fact, for all that she was sore, tired, and up to her ass in political shenanigans, not to mention increasingly convinced between the beacon and the cipher that they were all well and truly fucked, life felt easier after Feros. Their victory was a serious black eye to Saren, and she was finally settling into her new role.

So it was with a light step that she walked into Udina's spacious office and tossed off a lazy salute. "Captain."

Anderson was sitting off to the side on one of the black leather couches that defined the less office-like portion of the embassy, the space where the ambassador from Earth could sip drinks and play nice with other notables. He seemed in a good mood. "Commander. That was quite the show you just gave."

"Word travels fast." She gave the room a quick glance, a mix of familiar faces and complete strangers. Garrus, Alenko, and Williams stood out. The others blurred together in a swirl of uniforms and placid expressions.

"It was streamed live." Anderson raised an eyebrow. "'Racism cuts both ways'? Implying if it were someone else in trouble the good people of the Alliance would be less than supportive? That's barn burner stuff."

"Well…" Shepard slouched into a chair.

"There are those of the belief that going on all the major networks and stopping just shy of calling your fellow citizens hypocrites would be insensitive." He seemed torn between bemusement and admonishment. His mouth quirked at a corner.

"I called it like I saw it." She rolled her eyes. "Look, I don't care for the way we get brushed off by the three ringleaders of the xenophobic tightass club either, but we need them, and it's time everyone started getting used to that reality."

It was then that she noticed Williams staring at her with quiet horror, and Alenko was surreptitiously trying to draw her attention to the far end of the alcove. There sat a gray-haired man in dress blues, with a long scar down his cheek and piercing blue eyes fixed on her with abstract curiosity, as if she were a particularly fascinating specimen.

She spotted the bars on his shoulders and swallowed, sitting up straight in her chair. "Admiral. I didn't notice you, sir."

Not a muscle twitched in his face. "Are you always quite so candid, Lieutenant Commander?"

When she was this deep in it, honesty was the sole course forward. "Only when it counts, sir."

He snorted, and if she didn't know better, she would swear he was trying not to laugh. Anderson cleared his throat. "Commander Shepard, this is Admiral Hackett, Commanding Officer, Alliance Fifth Fleet. We were reporting out on the Feros situation when you came in."

Hackett was stationed on Arcturus, a logical posting given that the Fifth Fleet was the primary mobile defense for Alliance colonies. They were responsible for reconnaissance, first response at any sign of trouble, holding the Traverse border against the Terminus Systems, and while spec ops was technically its own division, more often than not they deployed their covert missions aboard assets of the Fifth Fleet. It was also his misfortune to be a ranking member of the Joint Military Council and a key military advisor to Parliament, apprising them of developing situations. Hackett's presence on the Citadel was a rarity.

It was odd enough to merit a question, despite the thinning ice beneath her feet. "Sir, if I can ask, what brings you all the way out here?"

"Our colonies are in complete disarray and, as you so eloquently noted, the Council doesn't seem overly concerned. I was dispatched to advise the ambassador." He leaned forward, folding his hands across his knees. "I also thought it was time we met, especially if you're going to continue editorializing the party line."

"When asked my opinion I've given just that. I would never claim to speak for the Alliance."

"Feeding the press Saren's identity wasn't an opinion, Commander."

One of the ways she knew that she was growing into this spectre business was she actually took a moment to consider before replying. "No, sir. I received your email. While nobody ever ordered me to keep it secret, I understood the revelation would meet with disapproval, which is why I didn't ask first."

His eyes continued to study her. She got the sense that behind them was an extraordinarily keen mind, one that might even be able to outthink her. "This has been a rough transition for you. You came off your ship with an important witness, the press engulfed you, they were shouting and jostling the both of you, and you threw out a juicy piece of intel to distract them."

"That's not what happened, sir." Shepard's gaze was steady and unashamed. "It takes more than a pack of over-excited journalists to worry me. I made a determination that it was vital that our colonists know who was responsible. It was a matter of self-preservation."

"And you just made that decision all on your own, right there on the spot."

"With all due respect, Admiral, if the Alliance didn't want me making those kinds of decisions on my own, they shouldn't have put up my name."

Hackett exchanged an unreadable look with Anderson. The captain smiled. "Do you believe me now?"

Shepard sat back and crossed her arms over her chest. "Why do I get the sudden impression that I've just been had?"

Hackett disregarded that statement altogether. "Feros was impressive work. Holding the colony against several platoons of geth would have been remarkable in its own right, but managing to soundly defeat them before reinforcements arrived is something else."

"Thank you, sir. It helps to have a good crew."

"Sure, but in that sort of situation a collection of great people doesn't add up to much without a good leader. In light of that, I'd like to discuss a new assignment, but it requires… discretion."

"I've kept a lot of secrets over the years."

He nodded, and glanced around at the other, less senior officers Shepard didn't recognize but guessed were his staff. They picked up their things and filed out of the room. Anderson followed, giving her a nod as he left. She raised an eyebrow at Hackett. "My crew?"

"They're going to find out anyway." If Hackett was the least bit uncomfortable with Garrus listening in, it didn't show. "Commander, less than seventy-two hours ago, Chairman Burns disappeared from Arcturus Station. We believe he was abducted."

Before he could elaborate, Alenko cut in. There was a careful quality to his tone. "Not Martin Burns, sir?"

"Yes." Hackett was mildly surprised. "He's a relatively junior MP. What's your interest?"

Alenko wrinkled his nose like he smelled something foul. "I have an L2 implant, sir. Of course I know who Burns is."

"Well, I don't," Shepard said. "Could one of you clarify?"

Hackett glanced at Alenko. "You seem to know at least as much as I do, Lieutenant."

Shepard got the definite impression that Hackett preferred to listen than to talk. He wasn't asking Alenko because he couldn't explain. He was asking because he wanted to hear _how _Alenko would describe the chairman.

The lieutenant cleared his throat. "He chairs the Parliamentary Subcommittee for Transhuman Studies, among other things tasked with overseeing the several hundred biotics who were fitted with L2 implants in the late 60s, many of them coerced under the auspices of Conatix's government program contract."

Garrus, who had maintained uncustomary silence throughout the exchange, cut in with incredulity. "Wait a moment. Your government forced surgery on everyone with biotic aptitude?"

"Back then we didn't know anything." Hacket was unapologetic. "We felt that it was in their best interests, to avoid harming themselves or others accidentally."

Shepard, for her part, was stuck on something else. "_Transhuman_ studies?"

"It was a popular word about ten years ago for describing biotics," Alenko elaborated, flatly.

"Alright." She paused. "I get the impression you don't think much of him."

"He's a shoe-shiner." Alenko was dismissive. "He never wanted this job, and it shows. Some L2s have very serious medical problems related to their implants, and most of them are not able to avail themselves of navy healthcare."

"There are health care provisions under Alliance law-"

"It's different when you have acute schizophrenia, or seizures, or even just plain old brain damage because the neurosurgeon who shoved the tech into your head didn't take special care with his knife. You need help above and beyond. But I don't think that's what this incident is about."

Hackett agreed. "We believe the motive behind the kidnapping was the Chairman's recent veto of proposed reparations for L2s and their families."

Shepard turned towards Alenko, confused. "You told me Conatix paid you off after your school shut down."

"I'm a special case, because I was in BAaT and because I was… directly involved with the program's termination." He leaned forward. "Most of Conatix's victims never saw a dime. And there _was _malpractice here, Commander. It doesn't excuse terrorism, not by a long shot, but we should at least be honest about how this happened."

The admiral said mildly, "Malpractice is a strong word. Let's not lose sight that the Conatix program was designed to help biotics."

Alenko folded his arms and looked away. "I believe the Alliance had good intentions. But they should've chosen their subcontractors more carefully."

Hackett reached into a briefcase at his feet and withdrew a datapad. "A group calling themselves 'Biotics for Justice' is claiming responsibility. They've been on our radar for about five years, but nobody anticipated they'd ever move beyond protests and letter campaigns."

Shepard let out a breath. "Burns prevented the reparations bill from leaving committee, which means there _was _a reparations bill. Their letter writing was finally getting somewhere."

"And then Burns pulled their feet out from under them," Alenko finished.

"Serves them right," Williams muttered under her breath.

Shepard's keen ears caught it anyway. "What was that, Chief?"

The young woman glanced over. "Life isn't fair, ma'am. Should I be filing a lawsuit against the Alliance over what happened to me on Eden Prime?"

"You volunteered for what happened to you on Eden Prime," Shepard pointed out. "Look, I don't know whether his reasoning was sound. It still doesn't give these people the right to kidnap him."

Hackett seemed glad to return to the point. "Exactly. We've managed to track their ship. I want you to take a boarding party and resolve this situation by any means necessary and extract Burns, alive. We need to send a message to our rogue factions that these tactics will neither be tolerated nor successful."

She nodded. "Understood, Admiral."

"Good." He tapped at the datapad, transferring the dossier to her omni-tool. "Sooner would be better, Commander."

"My ship's departure is scheduled for 1600 hours." She stood as he rose. "We'll handle it."

"See that you do." He paused. "And try to stay away from the cameras for awhile. You're going to make this station too hot to hold you."

Shepard felt her cheeks warm, but made no further reply beyond a respectful salute as the admiral departed.

Garrus was the first to speak. "So we're leaving, then?"

"As scheduled," Shepard confirmed. "I need to stop by the Alliance outpost."

"I have a few errands to run myself. I'll see you back aboard ship."

Shepard glanced at the two remaining occupants. "And you? Heading back to base?"

They both nodded. Williams said, "I'll find a taxi."

She rushed off. Her superiors followed at a somewhat more leisurely pace. Shepard raised her eyebrows at Alenko. "Reparations? Really?"

He stuffed his hands in his pockets and looked down at the ground, as though debating with himself. "When they were performing the first surgeries they liked to run us in pairs, thinking it would help us recover. The serial number on my implant is L2.1-003. L2.1-004 belonged to David Tan, and I was laying ten feet away from him in recovery when he suffered a grand mal seizure and died. He was sixteen years old. His family's never seen so much as an apology from anyone."

Shepard opened her mouth, closed it, and then said, "You didn't tell me there were dead kids."

"Yeah, believe it or not, these aren't cherished memories of my youth."

She watched him walk, hunched over into himself, wishing she knew the right thing to say and feeling like a heel. _I must've sounded so stupid back on Feros, complaining about how my big shiny job makes life hard. _"I guess it must seem pretty trivial when people complain about anything."

He stopped and looked at her. "Don't be like that. You know how you feel about being a spectre? What happened to me as a teenager, or even simply being a biotic, isn't the measure of the experience of my life either. Feeling discontent or lonely is pretty universal regardless of your history."

"Hey, I'm trying to be contrite over here. Stop justifying my whining." Shepard grinned.

They resumed walking. "In that case, ma'am, I'm shocked to find you displaying an unprofessional level of humanity and will definitely be filing a report."

She shoved him, playfully. He pushed back. They half fell out of the stairwell onto the Presidium walk, laughing.

Williams was waiting by the taxi stand. She rolled her eyes. "If you're quite finished acting like children, the car's going to be here any second."

The three of them piled into the cab. It soared out over the lake, merging with the heavy traffic that persisted throughout the Presidium day and night. The scale of the ring never ceased to astound Shepard. The largest station Alliance station she ever called home would fit inside a mere quarter of it easily. And the Citadel's residents lavished space on aesthetics, something unheard of on smaller, less well-endowed stations. The lake itself was an extravagance, but it was dotted with fountains and bridges, and the floor of the ring showed ample amounts of green space- parks, plazas, gardens. Only the gentle curve of the projected sky and the long bowed lines of offices and apartments clinging to the walls gave away the fact that they weren't standing on planetary rock.

They were approaching the mass relay monument. Williams peered at it from the window. "You know, I don't usually care for sculpture, but this I like."

"I hate it," Shepard said flatly. "Every time I get within twenty meters of the thing, it feels like I've got a bee trapped in my skull going crazy trying to get out."

"The buzzing's pretty bad," Alenko agreed. "Makes my teeth tingle. Maybe it's something to do with wind currents whistling around the two long arms. You could get a hell of a vibrational feedback loop going."

Williams looked at them blankly. "What buzzing?"

They exchanged a glance. Shepard said, "You don't hear that?"

"It's high frequency, on the edge of audible range," Alenko reasoned.

"There's nothing wrong with my hearing, sir." Williams sat back and crossed her arms.

Shepard crossed her legs under her skirt, amused. "Don't tell me you _want_ to be bothered by the annoying as hell noise."

The chief snorted, but opted to change the subject. "I think we're coming up on the base. Say what you like about how the Council treats us, the Alliance has some pretty nice digs here."

Alenko said, "After the turians, we're the largest fleet in the galaxy. They do like that."

"Except when they're worried about human aggression," Shepard pointed out.

He chuckled. "The Alliance spends half its time worried about human aggression. Historically speaking, we're our own biggest threat. You can't exactly blame the other species for having the same concern."

The cab dropped them by the hatch, where two uniformed guards saluted as they entered. Shepard looked around, getting her bearings. "I need to find the mail stop."

"I need to find the exchange," Williams said. "After that siege on Feros, my utilities are trashed."

Williams left Eden Prime without any clothing besides her hard suit. They got her sufficiently outfitted to satisfy regs during their first visit to the Citadel, but she didn't have any uniforms to spare. Shepard nodded. "Alright. We'll see you back at the ship."

"Ma'am." Williams saluted, and took her leave.

Shepard and Alenko made their way to the mail stop and gave their names to the serviceman on duty. He went to the back to collect their parcels while they waited at the counter. When he came out, he handed Alenko a large box and Shepard small package along with an envelope.

She slit open the envelope first. Paper mail was a rarity in these days. It was a card with _Congrats on your new job! _emblazoned in tacky bubble letters on the front. Bemused, she flipped to the inside.

_Here's to finding whole new ways to sit on your ass all day, you lucky bitch. 3 Im_

_PS- Sorry I couldn't make it. I was stuck out in the Verge. You know how it is._

Shepard laughed, shaking her head. Alenko raised an eyebrow.

"Old colleague," she explained, holding up the card. "We trained together. If you think I'm nuts…"

"Ah." He pulled out a pocket knife and slit the tape on his own package.

She craned her neck. "What've you got?"

"It's from my parents." He flipped open the lid, pulling out a plastic tub and holding it out to her. "Chocolate chip cookies, as promised."

Shepard smirked and made a show of opening it up and taking a bite. "Thank you."

His expression could have wilted lettuce. "You are a complete brat."

"You are a complete brat…?"

He rolled his eyes. "You are a brat, _ma'am_. And I rest my case."

She snickered again and took another bite of the cookie. Alenko reached back into the box and pulled out the second item, a folded blue blanket.

Shepard eyed it. "Your mom knit you a blanket?"

"I mentioned in an email that the _Normandy's _thermostat could use some adjustment. I guess she took it to heart. Anyway, I think it's crocheted." When she gave him a look, he sighed. "What? She doesn't knit."

"I'm still trying to wrap my head around the fact that your mom freaking made you an entire blanket because you said it was cold."

"My mom is…" He looked up at the ceiling. "She's kind of a walking anachronism. She makes things by hand. Someone moves in down the hall, someone dies, someone has a baby or gets sick, she's always the first one to show up with a casserole. She volunteers."

Shepard chewed and swallowed. "She sounds like a nice person. But, I mean, we have blankets on the ship."

"It's not politically correct to say so, and I've never found a way to ask why I'm an only child that wouldn't be terminally awkward, but I think all she really wanted out of life was to be someone's mom." He shrugged. "Ok, so it's a little embarrassing sometimes, but it makes her happy. It's hardly a big price to pay for that."

Understanding dawned. "She wanted to be a career mother, and her son spent half his childhood with someone else."

"That's not all of it, but that's part of it, sure."

"It's also a little because you like home baked cookies and hand-crocheted blankets?"

He laughed. "You don't?"

Shepard glanced down at the tub. "You weren't wrong about these cookies, that's for damn sure. Are you sure she doesn't put anything that would fail a tox screen in these?"

"Pretty sure. I mean, she's from Singapore." Alenko checked inside the box to be certain he hadn't missed anything, and then pitched the empty container in the trash and folded the blanket over his arm. "I have a few more errands to run myself. I'll be at the dock by 1500 hours."

"1430 would be better if you can manage it. I've got some things to review with the officers."

"Aye aye, ma'am." He offered her a salute, and took off towards the exchange.

Shepard tucked the card into a pocket and the cookies along with her package under her arm. It wasn't the sort of thing she wanted to open out in public. For a few minutes she considered various ways to kill time on a rare bit of shore leave, before deciding to take Hackett's advice and get back to her ship. Dealing with reporters and gawkers was more of a morning endeavor.

She was stopped all the same several times as she left the base, by fellow soldiers wanting to offer their support, sate their curiosity, or ask for favors. Shepard managed to shake the last one off by posing for a quick picture. As she stepped through the hatch back out into the ward, she was forced to navigate a throng of civilians gathering during the lunch hour to petition the stream of Alliance personnel, along with a few panhandlers. The Citadel had its poor and its problems just like everywhere else. Those parts of it that were human looked to the Alliance for support, also just like everywhere else. C-Sec might be taking on more humans every year but the trust just wasn't there yet.

One of them rattled his can under her nose. "Credit to spare for an old vet, ma'am?"

"Sorry," she muttered, pushing around him.

He blinked. "I don't believe it. You're Hannah Shepard's little girl, aren't you?"

She turned and narrowed her eyes. Her family and the other personal details of her life were hardly private these days, and using them to try to extort money from her was beyond the pale. "Is that supposed to be funny?"

"No, no, you got it all wrong." He held out his hand. He wore fingerless gloves matted with dirt. "I'm Ernesto Zabaleta. I served with your mother on the _SSV Einstein_, years ago. She brought you on board a couple of times when you were a kid- I still remember those braids you used to wear."

Shepard couldn't recall the man or the name, which was odd for her, but the details of his story checked out. Her mom had liked giving her tours of the ships when she was in port, and showing off her daughter to her colleagues. Both of her parents served aboard the _Einstein _for years. Shepard herself had lived in its overcrowded family barracks, for a few months here and there, when they couldn't make other arrangements. Housing conditions for families on even large carriers were spartan and limited.

She shook his hand. He smelled faintly of sour booze. "I'm sorry, I don't remember you, mister… Zabaleta, you said?"

"You got it." He sat back on his heels, smiling broadly, and hooked his thumbs through his belt loops. "Man, Hannah and I go way back. She must be so proud of you."

"So I hear." Shepard actually hadn't seen more than a short email from her mother since all this began. "If you're a veteran, what're you doing out here begging for credits? The VA too good for you?"

Zabaleta's grin faded. "I don't like it there, is all."

"They make you stop drinking?" she asked dryly.

"It ain't that simple. Sure I drink some, so does everyone, it takes the edge off some things…" He trailed off. "Aw, hell, you don't want to hear about this, I'm sorry."

On that point, he was entirely correct. Though she suspected him of lying through his teeth, on the off-chance that he was being honest, she made a final stab. "You know, whatever those things are, they have people at the VA trained to deal with it. It's worth giving it another shot, and it sure beats panhandling."

"Yeah, maybe," he said, in a tone that meant he was going to ignore every word. "Hey, say hi to your mom for me, would you?"

She forced a smile. "Of course."


	29. Chapter 29

Hackett's dossier on the biotic extremists indicated the group rented a merchant ship, the _MSV Ontario_, from an agency on the Citadel a little less than two weeks prior. They laundered the transaction through an unidentified third party, and so nobody caught it when it entered Arcturus airspace. From there, using a small shuttle attached to the ship, the extremists boarded the station, caught Burns on the way to his home during the late evening hours, and left the system shortly thereafter in a perfectly legal, open, and approved way. It was the next morning before anyone realized Burns was missing, by which time the _Ontario _was long gone.

Shepard skimmed the description of how intelligence forensics traced the ship. It was fascinating, but irrelevant to her part of this mission. The long and short of it was that the evidence pointed to the Hades Gamma cluster, known rather more romantically as the Crab Nebula in centuries past, today a nexus for galactic trade. The Anansi-Ishtar shipping lane wound between the Farinata and Cacus systems, bringing with it an ample crowd of vessels in which to hide. Not all of them were traders. There were refueling ships, supply haulers, even entertainment. Amid all that, the commander wasn't optimistic about quickly identifying one ship making an effort to disguise its signal.

They were about a day out from Farinata. And Shepard was out of excuses for a less pleasant chore. She set down the datapad, shrugged into her leather jacket, and left her cabin, heading for the stairs.

Specialist Lowe saluted. "Commander. What can I do for you?"

"At ease, Specialist. I need to make a transmission to the _SSV Kilimanjaro._"

"Of course, ma'am." Lowe entered a command into her terminal. "The call is for her commanding officer?"

"No, the executive officer, Captain Shepard."

Lowe paused and started to ask the question, then caught sight of her face and swallowed it. "Yes, ma'am. It should take twenty minutes or so to clear it through channels."

"Page me when you have it." Shepard left the CIC and made her way to the bridge.

There wasn't much for a pilot to do while they were cruising at FTL speeds between destinations. Once a course was plotted, only equipment malfunctions or large uncharted celestial objects would do much to alter it. Joker was leaning back in his pleather couch, watching a news vid.

Shepard rested her arms on the back of the seat. "Flight Lieutenant."

He glanced up. "Hey, Commander. You really ruffled some feathers back on the Citadel. I don't think ANN has stopped running that clip."

A smug grin crossed her lips. "Good."

"Sometimes, ma'am, I think you get a sadistic kick out of making people uncomfortable."

"You know what feeling uncomfortable means, Joker?" She glanced from the news report to her pilot. "It means people are thinking about their assumptions. It's not supposed to be comfortable."

"Well, whatever it means, you've got people talking. They're talking about Feros, too."

"Is that right?" Even as she spoke, the report flipped to a holo they'd taken at the colonists' request, of the crew grinning in front of the _Normandy_. The population of Feros was very grateful regardless of the official ExoGeni, Alliance, or Council stance.

"They're careful to give us credit for saving their asses, but…"

She sighed. "But what?"

"A lot of them are asking how we managed to let Saren slip away a second time. People are angry, Commander."

"Saren wasn't even planetside by the time we got there," she protested.

"Don't have to convince me, ma'am." Joker dismissed the vid screen, replacing it with an operations summary of _Normandy's _systems. "They sent a frigate to fight a war. You get what you pay for."

"We're going to get this bastard, Joker. I don't care how many ships or units he has."

"I don't doubt it, ma'am. Honestly pissing you off while packing anything less than a full armada is bringing a knife to a gunfight."

"There's cause for anger, sure. But that's not why we're going to win."

Joker rolled his eyes. "Is this the point where I hold myself at attention and just zone out for twenty minutes while you spout some patriotic mumbo-jumbo? Cause I got enough of that back in basic."

"I looked up some things about Saren. He was a golden boy of the Hierarchy, one of the youngest spectres ever appointed, the cherished son of the strongest military in the galaxy. He's been showered with accolades, money, and prestige. Great in a firefight, but he's never had to really fight for anything he wanted, not once in his entire life."

"So he's got a sense of entitlement to make teenaged heiress blush. So what?"

"Think about it, Joker. He didn't come after us with one boat and a sense of conviction. He planned this for years and only tipped his hand after he had an army. He's cocky, he's cautious, and he's never been on the outside. This is a whole new world." Her smile was small, grim, and fierce. "I'm scrappy, I'm stubborn, I'm a complete pain the ass, this is my turf and I am quite simply better at this than him. That's why we'll win."

The comm crackled from the ceiling. "Ma'am, your transmission is ready in the comm room."

"Got it." She clapped Joker on the shoulder. "As you were, Flight Lieutenant."

She walked the length of the ship aft to the comm room, letting the hatch shut behind her, and took a deep breath before hitting the switch. Zabaleta's bizarre claim made for a nice reason to call, but the truth was they only spoke a few times a year. They were due another conversation.

The woman who materialized on the pad could have been Shepard, aged thirty years. There were some cursory differences- her short, silvered hair, the fine lines at her eyes and mouth, the alabaster skin Shepard had too much of her father's blood to match- but the fine bone structure of their faces, the twilight blue of their eyes, even their remarkable height and bearing were nearly identical. Her dress uniform, standard for high-ranking officers aboard dreadnoughts, was clean and pressed.

"This is the X.O.," she said crisply, before taking in who was calling. Then she was dismissive. "Oh, hi. I'm on duty. I can't exactly talk right now."

"It's fine, I'm busy too." After so long, Shepard no longer allowed her mother's brusqueness to bother her.

Hannah, however, seemed to feel a touch of remorse. "I'm sorry I haven't called. The Fifth Fleet's been stretched thin as cobwebs since the invasion. Did you get the flowers?"

"I did." She paused, willing herself to say a simple thank you and move on, but the temptation for sarcasm was overwhelming. "The daisies were an especially nice touch."

Her brow furrowed. "What's wrong with-"

"I'm _allergic_ to daisies, mom." Shepard was exasperated. "They give me hives."

"Oh." Hannah was chagrined. "Of course you are, I'd... Your father always handled all the doctor's appointments and forms… Well. Congratulations all the same."

Shepard buried her disappointment alongside the feeble hope she entertained every single time they spoke, despite her better judgment. "Just forget it."

"Sweetheart, I'm sorry."

"I said it's not a big deal." Before they could continue down that path, Shepard grasped at a new topic. "How are you?"

"There's not much I can talk about. High Command has everyone out on patrol, but there's just not enough of us." Hannah blew out a breath. "How do you like having your own ship?"

"It's…" Shepard trailed off, shrugging into her jacket. _A lot more work than I thought it would be. A lot more worrying, too. Being responsible for the lives of a handful of people for a few days at a time is a whole other thing from more than forty, all the time. Everything's riding on me and I'm hardly closer to stopping Saren or finding the conduit than I was when I got the mission. Statistically, on a job like this some of them are going to die, and I don't want it to be because I wasn't sure what to do._

But she knew how those conversations went. Mom would say something bracing about keeping her chin up or her head in the game, brush it off as something every officer experienced, or spin some tangential anecdote from her own service that was supposed to teach Shepard a lesson. Hannah was well-meaning- indeed, it would hurt her to know the advice wasn't always received in that spirit- but Shepard wearied of being lectured over every small disclosure.

"It's great," she said brightly. "The ship is phenomenal, and Anderson picked out a terrific team."

"David's always had a soft spot for you. But I'm shocked he's letting you run your mouth like I've seen lately. Also, your uniform was rumpled."

There it was, the inevitable chastisement. She rubbed her forehead. "For god's sake, mom."

"You _know _better, Nathaly. It's not your job to set policy for the navy."

"I don't believe I was, _ma'am_."

"There's no need to take a tone." Hannah was indignant. "You have a big podium now. Take some care in how you use it. You've got to keep it together, sweetheart, because when you have hysterics it reflects on us all."

"Hysterics," Shepard echoed, flatly.

Hannah adopted an air of patience, as though her daughter were the one being unreasonable. "All I meant was that you are a commissioned officer, and there's something to be said for acting like it, instead of a-"

"I'm just going to stop you right there." She swallowed and pressed on before her temper could get the better of her. Hannah always seemed to win those rounds by sheer maternal right of way. "I'm calling because I ran into this guy, Zabaleta? He claimed he was an old friend of yours. I wouldn't have bothered you, but these days more and more people are trying to get something out of abusing my name."

"Ernesto?" She was taken aback. "He was a marine guard in the CIC, back on the _Einstein._ We shared a watch for years. How is he?"

"Not well. He was begging for credits outside the Alliance outpost."

Her face fell. "I'm sorry to hear that. He was one of the first boots down on Mindoir during the batarian raid… He was never the same afterwards."

"That was the year after dad got hurt, right?" Shepard shook her head. "That was a bad business. Small wonder the Council ended up ruling for the Alliance on colonization in the Skyllian Verge, after that."

"The vids couldn't show the half of it. Those slaver bastards _culled_ anyone too old or young to be useful, or putting up too much of a fight to be worth the trouble. The rest they implanted with control rods, directly into the brainstem, without anesthetic. I coordinated the orbital offense, preventing their ships from escaping, and just listening to what was happening on the ground…" Hannah trailed off, her eyes distant. "It was horrifying."

A few choice horrors flashed through Shepard's mind, courtesy of her own memory banks. Some of the atrocities on Elysium weren't that different and the Terminus made the batarians look squeamish. She tried to be fair. Her mother wasn't a marine, and she sure as hell wasn't special forces. Zabaleta was just a guard. "So, what, he has PTSD from what he saw?"

"Wouldn't anyone?"

Shepard gritted her teeth. "I don't." _And I never got half this much sympathy from you about it, either._

Her mother sighed. "Most people aren't as strong as you, Nathaly. It's a gift. Lt. Zabaleta doesn't have it. He tried to keep going, to be a good soldier, but it rode him- showed up late, showed up drunk. Eventually we couldn't cover for him anymore."

"He was discharged."

"Yes." She stared at the ground. "I spoke at his hearing. We managed to get him a medical discharge rather than a dishonorable, so he could get the help he needed, but he's never taken advantage of it. It's a shame."

"He let one experience ruin his entire life."

"Those who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones," her mother chided.

Shepard bristled. "An event that _changes_ your life is different from destroying it."

"I should get back to the CIC," Hannah said, not wanting to reopen old arguments. "I know you must be working twenty hour days, but we should try to schedule time soon for a real talk."

"Sure," she said, not meaning it. "I'll talk to you later."

She reached for the button to terminate the call. Her mother looked up. "Nathaly, I also wanted to say this- I'm so very proud of you. I don't think I tell you that enough."

Shepard's expression softened, marginally. She wanted to be irritated by her mother's laissez-faire approach to family, enjoy feeling justified and angry for a little while, and then mom went and said something like that. _Damn it._ "Thanks. I'm… I'm trying."

"You try better than anyone I've ever met." That was a double-edged observation if Shepard ever heard one. "_Kilimanjaro _out."

The link went dead. Shepard blew out a long breath, leaning forward and staring down at the pad. It was hard to reconcile the woman who'd thrown her handmade art in the trash because "cards become clutter once they're read" with the one who hugged her like her life depended on it when she came home from a deployment. The years weren't making it any easier.

She always hoped it would, that somehow her forward venture into adulthood would cross trajectories with Hannah's stately tumble into age, but it never seemed to happen. Shepard was used to seeing to herself; she grew up on ships and space stations, not infrequently under minimal supervision, and all but put herself through school with educational vids and workbooks. It was one reason why she had so many difficulties assimilating into a standard high school on Mars. Personal responsibility was a skill she mastered before she measured her age in double-digits. She didn't _need _an elder female figure who might commiserate or offer sage guidance.

But sometimes, the idea sounded really, really nice.

The hatch slid open, admitting Tali'Zorah. "I'm sorry, am I interrupting?"

"No. Just stupidly wishing my mom knew how to bake cookies."

Tali strayed closer. "That was your mother?"

Shepard rubbed her face, looked down at the pad. "Yeah. It always feels more like talking to a C.O. than a parent."

Tali grimaced. "My father… he's a difficult man. I don't think I've ever seen him smile. You have my sympathy."

She narrowly avoided the obvious, and insensitive, question about the masks, and instead asked, "You've mentioned he's some kind of leader. I'm not familiar with how the flotilla's government works."

Tali twisted her hands, and unconscious gesture. "My father, Rael'Zorah, is one of five high-ranking military officers who form the Admiralty Board. Technically, the flotilla is still under martial law, but three hundred years is a long time. These days, most of our laws are decided by the Conclave, whose members are elected from each ship."

Shepard blinked. "So, your father essentially heads the quarian military fleet?"

"…something like that." Tali was embarrassed. "They also advise the Conclave, and can overrule them in dire circumstances. But the decision must be unanimous, and all five admirals resign following."

She processed that. "Hypothetically speaking, if the _Normandy _came under attack with you on board, just how large a diplomatic incident would it create with the Migrant Fleet?"

"It doesn't work like that." The quarian sighed. "I'm just me. My father's rank doesn't confer any special privileges on his daughter. There's always been a lot of expected of me, though."

She sounded wistful. Shepard leaned back against the guardrail. "You know, a few months after my grandmother died, I saw a piece of jewelry in some tourist shop wherever we were living that month. I was about eight years old. It reminded me of her and I started to cry. My mother told me to stop being so dramatic."

"When my mother died, after we were left alone with the body, my father patted my arm and told me I'd be fine. That was all."

"Alright, you win." Shepard shook her head, bemused. "We sound like Liara."

That got a light laugh. "It's not like Liara at all, not really, at least not for me. Everyone respects the asari. Nobody respects us."

"Well, you do strip-mine every promising planet you pass, and sometimes you take other people's jobs with under-the-table deals," Shepard pointed out.

"Nobody owns a job, Shepard. If they can't compete that's not our problem. Besides, that doesn't justify treating us like thieves or vandals."

"I don't believe I said it did. Disliking the business practices of the Migrant Fleet isn't carte blanche for racism." She shrugged, and moved the discussion back to center, curious. "Do you have any brothers or sisters?"

"No. There are seventeen million people living in the flotilla. We have a very strict one child policy that is rarely rescinded."

Shepard raised her eyebrows. Replacement rate was 2.1 children per woman- one child to replace each parent and a little extra to account for child mortality. "The quarians are trying to shrink their population? No offense, but… aren't there kind of not many of you left?"

"The fleet is very crowded." Tali glanced around the comm room. "This ship holds about forty crew? A similar sized vessel back home might house three hundred."

Shepard blinked. She couldn't begin to imagine it. "Fuck me. And people live like that?"

"We're used to it. Both the living conditions, and the law."

"A few nations back on Earth tried similar policies, last century."

Tali tilted her head. "I'm sorry, I think my translator just fritzed... Did you say nation? That's a very archaic word."

"Not for humans." Shepard laughed. "The other species have had centuries to sort themselves into neatly unified governments across swaths of systems or ships. Out here, it's the Systems Alliance. But back on Earth, they're just one of many. It's a reason the Alliance is headquartered on Arcturus Station instead of Earth. Give it a few more decades, and maybe..."

The comm crackled overhead. "Commander, you've got a strategy session in the CIC."

"Roger that." She rolled her eyes at Tali. "Duty calls. Sorry for tying you up."

"It's not a problem. There's a quarian ship in dock. I have a few contacts aboard, and I thought I'd see if they had any information on the _Ontario._ You never know."

/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\

It took some time, but they managed to locate the _MSV Ontario _hiding quietly behind an asteroid. Asteroid belts weren't terribly crowded, excepting odd cases like the Sparta system where debris rained down on Edolus day and night. They occupied huge swaths of space with the same mass as a terrestrial planet. However, a good-sized planetoid had enough bulk to shield a ship from ladar scans and other detection methods. Even observed head-on the ship would be little more than a blip of heat superimposed against cold rock without much resolution.

_Normandy's _stealth capabilities were fully engaged as they took some recon on the rented vessel. Shepard had spent the time in transit studying its layout and systems, all publically available information. Now she had scans to confirm the extremists had not altered the ship substantially. They could make educated guesses on where aboard the biotics were holding Burns, but these were approximations only. The ship appeared to lack armaments.

Pressly was in favor of maintaining stealth, forcibly board, and sweep everything out before the extremists knew what hit them. Shepard had to admit the plan had the advantage of simplicity. These people weren't hard-boiled; they'd done this out of desperation, not experience. There was a decent chance that when her marines swarmed the deck they'd panic rather than erect a rational defense. Of course, there was also a chance that panicked or not, their first order of business would be to shoot Burns in the head.

Garrus disagreed vehemently. His experience with C-Sec taught him that if the objective was to keep anyone alive, and there was any chance the enemy was open to negotiation, delicacy and caution were required. In his words, if all they wanted was to send a message and end the crisis, the _Normandy _could blow up the whole ship from a couple hundred klicks away. He recommended hailing the _Ontario _and attempting to talk their way on board. Warning the hostiles they were coming, however, significantly raised the risks for _Normandy _personnel.

Alenko was uncustomarily silent throughout their debate. While he never used twenty words where one would suffice, he was an active contributor in most strategy sessions, offering input on what his team could realistically achieve and pointing out any flaws or advantages he noticed in the plan. Today, he'd hardly said two words unless asked a direct question. Shepard wagered she understood. It was difficult for her not to sympathize with these people's despair, and she didn't even know any L2s other than Alenko himself nor was she deeply familiar with their plight. In contrast, the mission dossier had included background on the Chairman, and he was a difficult figure to admire; it seemed as though nearly every decision he made was politically motivated rather than aimed to improve the lives of his constituents. Biotics, particularly L2 biotics, were not numerous and they worried ordinary people. The reparations bill had not been popular. Alenko would never fail to do his duty, not unlike Shepard in that regard, but that didn't mean orders always sat well.

Shepard sided with Garrus. Admiral Hackett was clear that any outcome which included Burns' death would be considered a failure, and Shepard didn't fail. The biotics' representative, a nervous dark-haired man with splotches on his face, was startled when they contacted him. That didn't indicate much forward-thinking beyond persistence. The idea that the navy might do anything other than accept the loss of Burns or capitulate to their demands seemed not to have entered their minds. Shepard was pleased. It left her room to maneuver.

She coaxed him into agreeing to allow a contingent to board in order to discuss terms of cessation. There was no need to let on that the only terms the commander was willing to accept was their full unconditional surrender or deaths. She argued for a party of five, but the rep stuck stubbornly to three, which told her something about their probable numbers. If they were worried about being outmatched by five trained soldiers, then there weren't that many people behind this abduction.

Garrus' policeman training made him a no-brainer. This wasn't Shepard's first hostage situation but she appreciated the expertise. For her second support, she reluctantly selected Alenko. Liara might outpace him in sheer depth of understanding when it came to the use of biotics, but she wasn't familiar with human politics and Shepard worried if the discussion took a bad turn, she would be unwilling or unable to do what was required. On the other hand, Alenko might share some of the same reservations.

As they cycled through the airlock and waited for _Normandy's _decontamination protocols to complete, she gave him a sidelong look. "You up for this?"

He stared ahead at the door. "Yes, ma'am."

"You've been pretty quiet, Lieutenant. Something weighing on your mind?"

"No, ma'am." He glanced at her, unreadable. "These people kidnapped an MP, and that can't stand. Our orders are clear. There won't be a problem."

Her gaze lingered on him before the VI chimed softly, announcing that they could open the outer hatch.

They stepped into the hostile ship. Two guards toting handguns greeted them barrel-first. Neither wore armor, and both bore implant scars near their hairline. Shepard blessed their inexperience; they didn't try to disarm them as they were escorted into the depths of the ship. Her crew was fully outfitted, including hardsuits, and ready for a fight if needed.

The biotics did take a different approach to defense. Heavy crates were piled against interior hatches, obstacles that could have eaten up significant time for Shepard's team if they were trying to take the ship, but their guards working together cleared them with ease using biotics. They came across a few more pairs of armed extremists, maybe eight people total. Shepard wagered there weren't more than a dozen aboard. That was manageable, though their facility in flinging around heavy objects concerned her more than she let on.

Shepard, Garrus, and Alenko were led into a side room where they were met by quite the tableau.

Burns, still dressed in the suit he was wearing back on Arcturus, was on his knees with his hands folded behind his head, staring with resignation at the cross-hatched metal floor. The biotics' negotiator was poised behind him, the snout of a pistol snug against the Chairman's skull. He was flanked by two sullen-faced women, similarly armed, who were aiming directly at Shepard and her team. As they moved into the room, their guards took up positions at the rear corners and raised their guns.

Shepard looked around with an almost bored expression, though her mind was engaged in the crucial calculus of how it would happen if the extremists' fingers got twitchy. She wouldn't bet on any of them being good shots, but on the other hand, she wouldn't bet that the guns were for anything but show, either. It was difficult to look threatening when your real weapons lay entirely within your brain.

Her own people were watching as well. Garrus' attention wandered at regularly intervals between the man and the guards, though Alenko seemed fixated on the guard at the front left.

Aloud, she said, "I'm Commander Shepard. Let's not do anything we're going to regret."

"You write a thousand letters and get nowhere," their leader sneered, burying the muzzle yet deeper into Burns' hair. "You kidnap one politico and now I've got a spectre on my ship, negotiating with me. Force is all you people understand."

Shepard crossed her arms, utterly relaxed despite the brandished weaponry. "You wanted someone to listen, and you've got my undivided attention. What do you want to talk about?"

He stared at her, nonplussed. She gave it another try. "I've told you my name. Why don't we start with yours?"

"Jordan Brenner." He cleared his throat.

"Jordan, you have your audience. Speak. I didn't come all this way to hear myself talk."

Naturally, her failure to be impressed by his show of force only irritated him. "You don't know what it's like. What your damn government did to us."

"I know a little, but I don't mind hearing more." Might as well let him blow off steam by ranting a bit.

"They sent out health officers to register us like infected livestock. They told our parents that we were uncontrolled and dangerous, so they'd let the Conatix people play with our brains. Some L2s are crippled by the effects of their implants, and they can't get the help they need."

Here he raised his voice, jamming the gun hard into Burns. "Because this man decided scoring some points with a group of fearful, ignorant-"

"I was trying to help," Burns protested.

"Shut up!" The muscles in Jordan's neck were taunt, a sign of his rising rage. "Ships were detonated over our colonies to deliberately infect us!"

Shepard lowered her hands to her waist, hooking her thumbs through her utility belt- closer to her weapons but not touching them, not yet.

Garrus said, "There's no need to get loud. We're all friends here."

One of the women at the back laughed, an ugly sound. Her dark cheeks were sunken, her black hair flat and grimy in its tail. "Friends. How friendly were you when you abducted children from their homes and used them as experimental test subjects?"

Shepard started to respond, but Alenko beat her to it. "That's not how it happened, Lamai."

She and Garrus both turned to look at him. His hand had strayed to his sidearm, but his eyes were on the woman. He didn't look angry, only resigned, with a touch of sadness. "You know it's not. Nobody knew what they were doing, but most of them were honestly trying to help us."

"Kaidan." She was scornful. "I heard you sold out, but until today I didn't believe it. What, the spectre dig you up to try to sweet talk us? That's some quick staff work."

"I was already on the ship," he said placidly. "Come on. You remember Ms. Gillespie and those horrible spaghetti dinners every Sunday, to try to make us feel like a family? Or Mr. Beranek. He used to smuggle in network games for us."

"We were held there for _nine years_. They had no idea what these implants would do because the government told them there wasn't enough time to test anything-"

"Dr. Deserres lost her job for speaking out against the pace of the surgeries after David died, and she wasn't the only one."

"What would Rahna think if she saw you with a gun in your hand?" Lamai spat. There was a cruel edge to the question that Shepard didn't quite follow.

Alenko swallowed. If he had a reply, it died on his lips.

Shepard jumped back in. "The Alliance made some mistakes in how it's treated all of you. But you're making a mistake just as large, right now, that's going to hurt every human biotic from here back to Sol."

Jordan scoffed. "The only mistake we've made was not taking action earlier."

"Think about it," Garrus said. "Take a good look around. Do you think when people read about how you kidnapped and executed a government official they're going to care about your medical problems? Or do you think it'll just make all biotics look like terrorists, maybe lead to more registries and restrictions?"

They exchanged uneasy glances. Shepard pressed the point. "If Burns dies, there is nothing I can do for you. Let him go, and you'll have a chance to tell your story, one way or another."

Burns made another plea from the floor. "You're right. I did vote against the bill. I thought you were just another special interest group trying to wring money out of Parliament. But I was wrong, and I'm sorry for it. I'm willing to reconsider."

The biotic leader's hand wavered. "So, what, we walk out of here and trust Burns to keep his word?"

"Oh, no, you're definitely going to prison." On that point, Shepard left no room for objection. "But if you cooperate now, you'll get what you want anyway."

"If you can't trust Burns, trust the Commander," Alenko said, a little more persuasion thrown on the growing pile. "She may not be a biotic but she does understand. She'll make sure Burns follows through on his promises."

"And there's this." Shepard followed Alenko's carrot with a stick. "If you move to kill him, while I respect your talents, mine are also fairly impressive. I don't want to shoot anyone but don't think for a moment that will stop me if you don't make the smart choice."

He closed his eyes. The gun drew back a fraction.

Lamai grabbed his arm, holding it in place. "Jordan!"

"This is what we came here to do, Lamai."

"We came here to send a message," she hissed. "And you're letting them steal our stage for a handful of empty words."

"That's not what we discussed." He shook his head. "It's not what Kyle would want us to do."

"Kyle didn't want any of this. If we'd listened to him, we'd still be writing sad notes to Parliament right now." Her tone was pleading. "Jordan, they're doing it again. They're using Ascension to lure in new recruits, you've heard about the graduates disappearing-"

"Alleged disappearances." He took a breath. "No. We've got everything we wanted. It's time to end this." Jordan lowered the pistol. "It's over."

"It's not over until we make this bastard pay for what he did." Lamai swung her weapon towards Burns.

Shepard's hand closed around her gun, but before she could draw Lamai was lifted off her feet and flew the short distance to the far wall, which she struck with some force. Alenko advanced on her with a pistol trained on her head. She stared up at him woozily.

"You always loved theatrics." He sighed. "Time to drop the gun, Lamai."

She spat on the floor, and flung it towards him. It missed. "I supposed I should be grateful you didn't snap my neck."

The expression crossed Alenko's face so quickly that Shepard couldn't be certain she'd seen it at all. It was the angriest look he'd ever worn in her presence, and more than a little ill.

Shepard kept her gun drawn but aimed at the floor. She raised an eyebrow at Jordan.

"Stand down," he ordered his own people, who relaxed immediately. Most of them looked more relieved than upset despite their pending arrest.

"Tell them to lay down their arms," she instructed.

He snapped a look at his crew. "Do it."

Garrus collected the armaments and began binding up their hands. They offered no resistance. Alenko kept watch over Lamai until the turian could reach her.

The commander glanced at Jordan as Garrus secured him. "Who's Kyle?"

"I don't have anything to say about that."

"I think that you will, but it can be someone else's problem." She turned away slightly at put her hand to her ear. "Shepard to _Normandy_. The hostage is secured, repeat, the hostage is secured. Situation is green. We have taken the perpetrators into custody, prepare to receive."

/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\

Shepard was on a comm link to Hackett. "No, sir, that's when they capitulated. We've got the extremists in custody and Burns is aboard. We're headed back to Council space."

"Good work, Commander. I'll admit I'm shocked you were able to work things out peacefully."

"These weren't diehards, sir." Shepard folded her hands behind her back smoothly. "These were a handful of desperate individuals who just wanted a little acknowledgement that they'd been wronged and a little money to cope with it, that's all."

"They had enough scruples and conviction to pull off the abduction of a government official from the headquarters of the Systems Alliance, at the heart of human space. Don't kid yourself, Commander- these people are dangerous."

"Children were separated from their families and left without any protection against people who used them as guinea pigs." Shepard met his eyes. "Maybe they shouldn't have used these tactics, but what happened to them was wrong, sir. It was just wrong."

Hackett glanced down. The transmitter didn't render objects in the room, but he appeared to be looking at a desk or terminal. "What can you tell me about this Kyle? Is he some kind of ringleader?"

"They wouldn't elaborate. I was hoping you might have some intel."

"I do." Hackett pursed his lips, looking troubled. "It's all speculation. I'm also not certain it's in your jurisdiction. You got the job done. We can take it from here."

"All the same, sir, I'd still like to know. Collateral damage isn't always easy to predict."

"Fair enough." Hackett made punched a few invisible keys. "We've got reports that a former officer, Major Kyle, founded some kind of colony on the edges of the Traverse to serve as a biotic safe haven."

"Kyle's a biotic?"

"No, strangely. He was on Torfan."

Shepard winced. Torfan was a dodged bullet. It seemed like half of the marines with N-school rankings ended up on Torfan over the course of the two months they kept that meat grinder going. Most of them had scars, physical and psychological. After the unprovoked attack on Elysium and over a decade of mounting hostilities, the Alliance Navy bottled up the last of the batarian resistance on one of their moons. As entrenched as they were, it took a lot of patience and blood to root out the last of them.

Shepard was laid up with a broken femur at the time. She couldn't claim to regret missing out. "He was discharged?"

"On medical, yes. He feels some kind of kinship with biotics. We think he believes they share an emotional connection, that nobody else can understand what they've experienced. His efforts to help them seem genuine. It's hard to say if his commune poses any threat, but it's worth noting that Kyle's spread a lot of anti-Alliance rhetoric on the extranet. He's encouraging biotics to blame us for their difficulties."

"Alright." Shepard put it aside for the moment. "They also mentioned the Ascension program. That replaced BAaT, right?"

"Not exactly. Ascension is a civilian venture with input from the military, and its records are public. Participation is voluntary. It's true that some of the graduates have fallen off the radar, but we also don't track human biotics compulsively like we did in the old days. This is making mountains out of molehills."

She nodded and allowed the topic to drop. "There's someone waiting to meet us at the Citadel, sir?"

"Security officers are waiting to receive the prisoners, yes. We'll keep the press off you. Parliament can handle the curtain calls on this one."

"Aye aye, sir."

"Hackett out."

The comm went dead. Shepard retreated downstairs to the lounge and the company of her datapad. What she reported was true; the biotics were secured on the lower deck, under guard, while Burns was sleeping off the experience in a hot bunk. The hour was growing late. On a whim, she linked into the Alliance personnel database and looked up Kyle's dossier.

The major was a distinguished officer. He'd earned several commendations for bravery under fire, and had commanded the 104th marine division during the siege, the final unit to leave and the one that took the heaviest casualties driving out the last of the batarian hold-outs. The whole thing was a bloodbath. They had orders not to pull up boots until every hostile was captured or dead, and the only way to fulfill those orders was to send good people to their deaths, a battle of attrition. Torfan was a black mark on the Alliance record. There had been hearings in Parliament and extensive media investigation afterwards, during which the major's decisions were a subject of contention. Small wonder Kyle had cracked.

A few of the crew trickled in, catching a little R&R before hitting their racks. Garrus and Alenko were among them. She answered their curious stares with a summary of her findings. "I don't know whether they were acting on Kyle's orders, but I sure don't like the implications."

"The guy sounds like a nutjob," Garrus said. "He honestly believes he can lead human biotics to safety and acceptance by walling them off in a colony out in the middle of nowhere?"

Alenko leaned over her shoulder, glancing through the dossier. "Gotta admit, it sounds almost like a cult. People with odd abilities living together in secrecy under a leader promising peace and justice."

Shepard snorted. "Kyle's no messiah. He's a troubled officer with a misplaced sense of obligation."

"Maybe he thinks protecting these people will make up for all the soldiers he lost."

"Or maybe he's just crazy." Garrus shook his head. "We've seen men like him on the Citadel. Gang leaders, doctors selling snake oil, self-styled psychologists or prophets claiming to have found the path to enlightenment- all offering a better life to their followers at the cost of their undying loyalty, and not infrequently their wallets."

"Well, whatever Kyle is, he's the Alliance's problem now. We got Burns back. It was a good day." Shepard laid the datapad aside and slouched back in her seat, relaxed.

Garrus crossed his legs. "Surprising there weren't any casualties. When they started surrounding us, my neck started to itch."

"It was a risk to continue with negotiations at that point, but I try not to kill people if I can help it. That's not what my job is about."

"I thought it might also have been because you sympathized with them."

"My job's not about that, either. That's why we've got laws and courts and lawyers. The system gets to decide whether the context merits any consideration."

"You follow orders, just like that. It doesn't matter if they're the right orders?"

Shepard groaned. "Garrus, sometimes my superiors want my input and my judgment, and sometimes they give me a clear directive. The admiral told me what I had to do and left the details up to me. Orders aren't arbitrary. Our rules were developed to try to keep things as fair as possible for everyone."

"You sound like my father. 'Do things right or don't do them at all.'"

"Your father sounds like a wise man."

"Funny you should say that, because he'd hate you. Spectres represent a lot of power with hardly any accountability."

Alenko observed dryly, "Have you really seen a day go by on this mission when someone isn't yelling at the commander for a decision they didn't like?"

"True, but all they can do is yell." Garrus sat forward. "People like Saren don't play by the rules. It takes somebody who isn't restricted by procedures and red tape to bring him down."

Shepard was running short of patience on this particular argument. "I don't need to stoop to Saren's level to stop him, and neither do you. I hope you didn't think resigning from C-Sec was going to be a free pass."

"We'll see." Garrus got up, stretching. "I hope you're right, Shepard, but I also hope you'll be willing to do what it takes if you're not."

He departed with a nod, leaving Shepard and Alenko to their own devices. She sighed and rolled her eyes. "Wouldn't it be nice if everyone, our disgruntled detective included, really did just let me do my damn job without telling me how?"

Alenko swallowed a laugh. "We might be better off than you'd think."

"Yeah, well, let's take the _Normandy _out to the Terminus and declare ourselves mercs for hire, and see just how much accountability the Council and the Alliance think I should have. I'm guessing it's more than in Garrus' imagination."

"Or they might say great, let us know when you've conquered it so we can bring the Terminus Systems under the banner of council space." His grin gave away the joke.

"That's absurd. In this scenario, there's no chance I wouldn't keep it for myself." She grinned back.

"All hail Queen Shepard the First?"

"You got it." She picked up her datapad again, popping open her email. Alenko settled into his couch and did the same.

A couple of servicemen took up seats at the far end of the lounge, trading sidelong looks as they passed the pair. Neither offered so much as a friendly wave. It wasn't the first time it had happened in the last two weeks- standoffishness, sudden silences, and funny looks. Alenko's eyes followed them. "Is it my imagination or is everyone acting a little weird lately?"

Shepard had been rather dreading this conversation. She decided to take the awkwardness by the horns and confront the issue head-on. "You know it's because of Feros, right? I disappeared, you disappeared, we showed up together the next morning… Three guesses how they're filling in the gaps."

"I thought it might be something like that." He sat back and crossed his arms. "I mean, I hoped I just spilled soda on myself or something."

She chuckled. "I'm sorry. It's my fault we got stuck out there, tequila always puts me to sleep."

"I think being up for three days straight put you sleep. But it's fine." He shrugged. "Below deck rumors like that have existed for as long as there have been ships. We didn't do anything wrong. Some new scuttlebutt will take its place soon enough."

She was relieved that he was taking it so well. There wasn't an order she could give that wouldn't make the gossip worse. But there was undeniably a small part of her that sort of wished they had done something wrong, and that part was worried he was unconcerned because the very idea struck him as too absurd to treat seriously. And why should he? Article 218 of the Alliance Uniform Code of Military Justice was crystal clear on the legality of romantic relationships within a chain of command.

Moreover, he was attractive, talented, and a good man. He could do a lot better than a crazy-ass commando with a fucked up brain and she knew it. Shepard shoved the ugly thought from her mind and cleared her throat. "Chakwas says Lamai suffered a small contusion to the back of her head, but she should be fine."

Alenko didn't look up from his datapad. "Of course she will. I didn't hit her that hard."

"I just thought you'd like to know."

"We're responsible for the decisions we make." He blew out a breath. "How we respond to the things that happen to us is part of that. Nobody forced her to abduct Burns."

"She had some choice words for you. Sounded like you knew each other well." Shepard didn't want to push it, but if there was some resentment there, it was important that she didn't allow it fester.

"There weren't that many of us in Brain Camp. We all knew each other inside and out. Most of us lost touch after the program ended. Everyone wanted to get back to having a normal life, you know?"

She did know, but it still struck her odd that a group of people who grew up together and endured a lot of rough predicaments would cut ties like that. The snippets of fact started lining up in her mind. _"The Einstein disaster got the reporters off my parents' doorstep." "It turns out it's not ethical to teach a thirteen-year-old kid to slam another kid into the wall." "If I lose control…" _

"_What would Rahna think?" "I should be grateful you didn't snap my neck."_

"_I'm a special case, because I was directly involved with the program's termination." _

Shepard bit her lip. "What happened to you, Kaidan? The way she was going on… is it possible you… hurt another student?"

He looked up and stared into space for a long moment. "It was an instructor. It was an accident, he died, and they shut down the program afterwards."

"I see." She leaned forward a bit. "You know, it's not-"

"I don't want to talk about this right now." He took a breath, and forced the smallest of smiles. "Shouldn't you be in bed by now, anyway?"

It was Shepard's turn to look away. "Not tired."

He wasn't fooled. "You're having nightmares again, aren't you."

Shepard rubbed her forehead, too weary to argue. "The cipher unlocked a lot of the vision. The Protheans compressed everything they knew about the reapers into this warning. I'm starting to access attacks on multiple worlds, invasion fronts spanning enormous swaths of the galaxy. This was a systemic annihilation of every last trace of civilization."

"Not every," he pointed out. "The relays survived, as did the Citadel, and world ruins like Feros. The Mars archives survived."

"So there was too much evidence for even the reapers to clear," Shepard said dully. "Maybe every habitable system had a relay, way back when. Maybe the Citadel was a rural mail stop. How should I know?"

He studied her. "You know what I think?"

"What?"

"I think you need a couple of hours where you're not planning for galactic invasion, or Saren, or hostage crises or any of the crap that gets dumped to your inbox every day." He glanced over at the vid terminal. "_Rama _just came out. Let's put it on and not think about anything for a little while."

The offer was not without appeal, but she hesitated all the same. There was an awful lot to do, enough make three hours wasted watching a movie seem indulgent. "Don't you have to sleep?"

"The headaches play hell with my schedule. I'm not even a little tired."

"Alright," she said at last, acquiescing. "You know they butchered the story to add more action sequences, right?"

"So we'll have some fun tearing it apart."


	30. Chapter 30

"I don't think you're hearing me." Shepard paced in front the comm. There was no visual; small retail shops didn't invest in that kind of equipment. Setting up the call from the ship alone had been a trial, but all the email in the world produced no results. "I can't come to your showroom. I'm not _on_ Mars. I'm an Alliance naval officer stationed in the Traverse."

"It really would be better if you could make the time. The options vary wildly and most of our customers find a demonstration helpful."

"It's not a matter of-" She smacked her forehead. "Look, I'm just trying to get a medical ventilation system installed in my father's home. All I need you to do is read the paperwork I emailed to your office from his doctors, look at the blueprints of his hab that I got from the manufacturer- which was not easy, by the way- and figure something out. How hard is that?"

"Ma'am, I can't help you if you're going to take that kind of tone with me."

Shepard considered muting the link so she could scream a few choice obscenities. "I'm sure you understand I'm not trying to be difficult. He won't do it himself because he's stubborn, but he's sick and he needs this. I'm doing my best. Can't you work with me here?"

"I'm going to escalate this to a member of our technical staff. Can I have your name again, please?"

"Nathaly Shepard."

"Natalie?"

She pinched the bridge of her nose. "I'm only in the news almost every single day."

"Excuse me, ma'am?"

"It's Nathaly, with a 'y'," she clarified, giving up. "And Shepard with an 'a' and no 'h'. Email would be best."

"Very good, ma'am. Someone will be in touch shortly."

Shepard punched the button to terminate the call with such force that the haptic interface didn't register the movement, forcing her to try again. There was a growing bruise on her thumb where it struck the guardrail. She sucked at the injury. _There are too many places I need to be right now._

Her eyes shut briefly as she took a breath, before taking a deliberate turn and heading down the stairs. The thought might be true, but there was only one place she _could _be right now, and she needed to focus on that.

Dr. Chakwas looked up as the commander stepped into the med bay. "Good afternoon, ma'am."

"You wanted to see me?"

"Yes." Chakwas, as always, had a pleasant tone, with just the faintest hint of dry amusement, as though they were discussing some gigantic joke only she could perceive. Or maybe in years of service she'd just seen so much that all of life struck her that way. "I wanted to discuss some of the suit biometric data. The analysis is routine, but this last pass turned up some odd results."

Shepard perched on an exam table, her feet swinging over the floor and her hands on her knees. "This is the output from the marine's hardsuits, when we're in combat?"

"Whenever they're worn, but it's the combat data I need to watch closely, yes." Chakwas walked to her terminal. "Can I send these plots to your datapad?"

"I don't know where the damned thing ran off to. It was being cranky again anyhow." She shook her head. "Just give me the rundown."

"Alright." She sat down in her chair and swiveled to face the commander. "This latest aggregation includes data from Feros through the beginning of the week. As you might expect, stress indicators are rising, along with weariness and decreases in bodily efficiency. They haven't fallen off as quickly as I'd expected following the end of the siege."

"Bodily efficiency?"

"Even minor injuries put strain on the body. They're beginning to add up." Chakwas calmly moved ahead. "I have a few suggestions for modifying our rations on the next resupply that may help. Also, I'd like to see more enforcement of shore leave when it is offered. Too many of the crew are simply staying aboard ship when we stop off somewhere for a half-day."

Shepard ran a hand over her hair. "I can't force people to enjoy themselves, doctor. And trying to do so is only going to make things worse. Not to mention a lot of the people staying back are using that time to catch up on sleep."

"A few of the more recalcitrant may grumble at first, but it will be for the best. Everyone needs some time to clear their heads every once in a while."

Shepard thought about it. She could see the logic. "So ordered. We'll see if we can't get some kind of rotation going, to give people a chance to do both."

"Make certain you're included in that rotation, Commander."

She snorted. "When we set down, it's usually because I've got something to do. Leave is going to have to be something that happens to other people for awhile."

Chakwas was undeterred. "We've got biometric data on you going back to when you left basic training. Your recent stress levels have been troubling, among the highest aboard ship. And I've got data from the _Normandy _VI that you're averaging fewer than five hours of broken sleep a night."

Shepard rolled her eyes and muttered under her breath.

The doctor continued, "You are beginning to demonstrate symptomatic behavior. Irritability, keeping to yourself, a short temper-"

"Dr. Chakwas, my temper's been short since the day I was born."

"You're sorting days into checklists, trudging from one task to the next."

"Can't be helped. There's too much to do."

"It's my duty to ensure soundness of health for this crew, Commander. That includes you. This mission is demanding, yes, but with the correct treatment we can at least chip away at the symptoms."

She raised her eyebrows. "You want to medicate me now, doc?"

"Not for these problems, no, though a good snifter of brandy now and again wouldn't go awry." She smiled slyly.

Shepard couldn't tell whether she was joking. "Is there anyone else I need to be concerned with? Last time we went through this, you mentioned Chief Williams."

"Ashley's indicators are one of the few datasets which are actually improving as the mission endures. Fighting back appears to be aiding her in coping with the events of Eden Prime."

"Great." Shepard hopped off the table. "Email me those plots, would you? I'd like a closer look."

"Certainly, Commander."

They were deep in interstellar space. The ship was calm, all systems nominal, and by now the crew who ran her could maintain the systems in their sleep. Shepard made a few more check-ins, then found her terminal on the top deck and started going through the daily fires. Maybe Chakwas was correct, and she was turning every day into a checklist without applying enough triage. It wasn't true that there wasn't anything she ignored. One of the media agencies, she had no idea which, had leaked her contact information shortly before her confirmation as a spectre. Now any number of disgruntled, desperate, or celebrity-crazed people sent requests for her attention on an hourly basis. Between the Alliance's filters and the superior commercial ones she'd been forced to buy, most of the crap got caught before she saw it, but every so often something leaked through.

_Dear Shepard,_

_I hope you remember me- Conrad Verner? I'm sure a beautiful, amazing woman like yourself gets plenty of messages from guys._

Shepard felt nauseous already. Her hand moved towards the delete icon, but the next line caught her eye before she could stop it.

_I printed out your signature on nice photographic paper and hung it on the wall of my living room, right over the fireplace. My wife loves it! _

How creepy was that. She was going to need a shower after reading this. But she forced herself to continue, on the off-chance that Verner's crazy had translated into actions she needed to address. Obsessive personalities without any tact or shame could create one hell of a PR problem.

_You're a hero, fighting for all of us back home, and you don't take crap from anybody. You're demonstrating everything humanity can do. Decades from now everyone will remember you, and I'll have your signature. (I grabbed a picture off the extranet to hang next to it- no offense, but your handwriting is awful!)_

_I also bought this:_

Her eyes went wide as they took in the imbedded image. Verner was posed in what looked like a shooting range, holding an M-8 Avenger. Quite aside from the fact that Shepard could not imagine anyone she'd like to see less with a deadly weapon, his grip was entirely wrong, the safety was off, and it was pointed at the unfortunate bastard standing in the next lane.

She squinted, and groaned. He'd painted the word "Nathaly" along the side of the barrel in red cursive script.

_Anything to support the war effort, haha! We're all rooting for you, Commander. You can count on me to do my part!_

_Sincerely,_

_Conrad_

She shuddered, entirely squicked out, and deleted the email. Then she undid the delete, and opened up a reply field. It was a bad idea to feed him, but she was damned if she wasn't going to cut off this stream of crap right now.

Not bothering with a salutation, she typed:

_Leave the guns to people who know how to use them. The best thing you could do for the Alliance is return that thing pronto. Also? Go hit on your wife. She might actually appreciate it._

_Don't write me again._

_-Cdr. Shepard_

Then she deleted the original message, and hoped this particular mess would stay in its box.

Liara walked by. "Hello, Shepard."

"Doctor." She closed the terminal. "Strange to see you in the CIC."

"I felt the need to stretch my legs. I've never spent so much time aboard ship."

"How is your investigation proceeding?"

Liara sighed and rubbed her forehead. "I have been looking back through my old publications. The subject of Prothean extinction has long been a topic of debate in archaeological circles, but I'm afraid few have been willing to explore… farfetched hypotheses."

"What's the common consensus?"

"There is none. The frontrunners are a galactic pandemic, an unusual period of galactic core activity precipitating mass extinction, or a collapse of the center of Prothean civilization due to war or other circumstances, causing widespread famine and decline. Each of these theories has its problems."

That much was self-evident. "For one thing, it's hard to imagine any of those taking out an entire civilization, spanning so many worlds."

"More importantly, any natural decline, by whatever mechanism, would have left a plethora of evidence- writings, recordings. Skeletal remains. Some of them would have been preserved by time. Instead it's like a cleaning crew swept through the galaxy after they were gone."

"But left the Citadel, and the relays. That doesn't trouble you?"

"If in fact these reapers have caused the annihilation of countless civilizations since the beginnings of self-awareness, allowing the structures to remain does raise questions about their objectives. Of course, we don't know how to destroy a relay. Perhaps the reapers suffer the same predicament."

That was a subject on which Shepard had expended some thought. "Is there any evidence? Of civilizations predating the Protheans, I mean."

"A little. Not much at all." Liara twisted her hands, her favorite gesture when she was thinking. "Given my own theory on the Protheans' disappearance, I've become one of the few experts on what scraps we have discovered. The Protheans made a study of them, much as we have of their culture."

"So no sites, no digs, no manuscripts…?"

Liara bit her lip. "There are… it's not scientific to mention it, but there have been rumors of a world that was home to a major site of a prior people, relatively undisturbed. But I don't know where it is, or even how to begin to find it. It's unclear if it was even a real place or merely part of Prothean religious or mythological tradition."

Shepard raised a brow. "Does it have a name?"

"The Protheans called it Ilos."

"Ilos." She turned the word over on her tongue. It had its own strange sound to it, though given the huge range of sounds in multiple species' multiple languages to which she was routinely exposed, it had to be more mystique than true distinction.

Liara drifted a step closer. Her blue eyes were earnest. "How are you feeling? Lately, I mean."

"I'm fine." She looked down at the terminal. It was the damndest thing, a character flaw, but while she could tell bold-faced lies without hesitation to cameras, to admirals, to enemies, when it came to her friends, she could never seem to quite pull it off unflinchingly.

Liara wasn't dissuaded. "You can trust me, Shepard."

She reached for a form of truth, keeping her voice to an undertone. Her chronic insomnia was an open secret- a frigate was far too small a ship to hide her wandering at all hours of the night- but the cause was not. There was no need to trouble the crew working the CIC. "The nightmares are… more intelligible, but they're still…"

"Nightmarish?" she suggested.

Shepard rubbed her eyes. "It's like a thought on the tip of my tongue. I can't quite grab hold of it."

"Perhaps I can help. I won't examine anything you don't want me to see, I swear it."

"I'll take it under consideration."

Liara squeezed her hand, and headed back downstairs to her lab. Shepard watched her go, and then turned back to her work.

The remainder of the day passed uneventfully. Shepard hit her rack at exactly the time prescribed in her duty schedule. Chakwas' warning was weighing on her mind more than it should, likely the so-called "treatment" to which the doctor referred. Sleep found her almost instantly. The dreams found her almost as fast. She made it to 0230 before giving up.

The third shift was at their posts, the second was long in bed, and the first had not yet woken. The mess was abandoned when she stopped to melt some chocolate and make a hot drink. The lounge was in a similar state. On a hunch, she made her way up to the bridge.

Shepard plopped herself in the couch next to Joker. Keeping odd hours was nothing new for her, a trait Joker shared, intermittently, and it wasn't the first time she'd visited in the dead of night. "Don't you ever leave the bridge?"

"Nah, except when I gotta shower or use the head. Takes too long to get back when she needs me." He nodded towards the controls, clearly indicating the ship. "Don't you ever sleep?"

"Can't sleep before a mission. Never could." This was easy, as it wasn't actually a lie, even if it wasn't telling the truth either. She curled her fingers around the mug, shrugged. "Nobody's perfect. Why are you up?"

"_Normandy's_ a demanding mistress. Lately she's been waking me up every couple of hours wanting a drive trimmed or a rattle soothed."

"You know, on most ships, this is why pilots work in shifts." Shepard was amused.

Joker made a face. "Nobody knows my baby like I do." He gave her a sidelong glance. "I've missed seeing you up here, Commander. Seems like lately you've spent all your midnight sojourns talking to our staff lieutenant."

She felt her face heat, and was glad he couldn't see it, between her dusky skin and the dark cockpit. A sip of cocoa buried the reaction entirely. "Good grief, not you too."

He waggled his eyebrows at her. Shepard rolled her eyes. "Alenko's migraines make his sleep schedule erratic. A lot of the time, we're the only ones awake who aren't on duty."

"Sure. Makes sense," he replied in a tone that stated clearly he wasn't buying it. "C'mon, Commander, who am I gonna tell? The ship?"

"Nothing to tell. We're friends. Nothing wrong with that." There was more than a little edge to her voice. As time dragged on, the gossip began to grate. Nobody was changing the subject as fast as she liked- that was what she got for taking them back out into deep space with lots of time to kill. "He's an easy person to talk to."

"I bet you say that to all the guys."

Shepard snorted. She drew her knees up to her chest and switched her attention to the port, where the plasma trails from their FTL drive washed over the glass against the background of stars. "What guys? I don't exactly cut a path through the ranks, Joker."

"Maybe not, but it's not likely you ever have a problem getting a date."

She took a moment longer to reply than was expected for light-hearted banter. "I've been told I'm intimidating."

He shrugged. "That's just calling a spade a spade, ma'am."

"Thanks." Her expression was sardonic. "Usually it either scares them off or we end up locked in a dick-measuring contest. It's just nice for once…"

"What?"

_Letting myself pretend a little bit that I'm attractive, for who I am instead of what I am, to not do ALL of the pursuing, god forbid maybe feel a little feminine now and again. Even if it's only in my head. _She sighed, and said aloud, "It's just nice to have someone to talk to, that's all."

Joker snickered again. She whapped his shoulder. He feigned innocence. "What?!"

"Knock it off." Shepard sat back, sullen.

"Oh, come on, Commander-"

"You want to know what my love life is like?" she snapped. All the sidelong looks and whispering finally worked its way under her skin. Shepard was at her wit's end. "Here it is. People see me as either a project or a conquest. Some of them want to fix me, be the person who settled the great Commander Shepard down, and others just want to be able to brag to their friends that they banged the survivor of Akuze or an N7 operative or whatever. There've been times I didn't care, but at this point? I'm incredibly sick of it."

He wasn't having it. "Sure, but-"

"Finding someone who is a sane, decent, attractive, and unlikely to bitch continuously about the fact that I spend most of my life in danger aboard a spaceship is the goddamn holy grail. I haven't exactly managed it yet."

"I didn't mean-"

Shepard rode right over him, jabbing a finger at the pilot. "And here's another thing. I've not done one damn thing, not one, that crosses the line, not with Alenko, not with anyone else on this ship or any other ship. I'm allowed to be friendly. Believe it or not, I'm also allowed to enjoy it when someone tosses a little harmless banter my way. I shoot people for a living. I don't get that much flirtation in my life. Can everyone just lay the fuck off?"

"Geez, ok, sure." Joker held up his hands in surrender. "Holy crap."

She rubbed her forehead. "Thank you."

They sat in silence a few minutes, letting the air cool. Shepard took another sip of her cocoa. It was cooling rapidly. He trimmed the drive. There was only the whisper of air through the vents.

After a time, Joker said, "I know it's not easy. Being alone. Brittle bone disease doesn't exactly have the ladies lining up around the corner either."

She gave him a very dubious look. "What's your point?"

"I don't want to make a thing out of it."

"Joker. It's late. Or early. C'mon."

"You've got strength and wit and health. So your accomplishments bring the crazies out of the woods, so what? Date better people." His impatience with her griping was obvious. "You want me to tell you the tale of _my_ love life? Let's just say bones that shatter if you stare at them too hard does not make for sexy times."

"I don't have time to do anything about it."

"Then make time. They say the galaxy's a big place. I don't know if it's that big. People like you and me, we don't fit in anywhere." He brushed some invisible dust off the _Normandy's _frontbox, a small, fastidious gesture. "We gotta make our own places. That takes some extra work."

Shepard turned back to the window and sipped at her chocolate. "You're really going to talk to me like this?"

The humor was back in her voice. Joker picked it up. "Only when you've earned it, Commander."

"Shut up and fly the ship."

"Aye aye, ma'am."

/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\

The next day, Shepard resolved to go see Liara. The whole debate was ridiculous. Saren still wasn't in sight, there was the potential that combining Liara's expertise with the Prothean knowledge imprinted on the backsides of her eyelids would yield a solution, and Shepard always did what was required to complete her mission. Even if it meant letting the asari paw through her thoughts.

Besides, allowing a friend who meant her no harm whatsoever access to the cipher and the beacon's message was a rather stupid thing of which to be afraid.

Fear wasn't a customary emotion for Shepard. In the middle of a firefight, in the middle of a tongue-lashing, in the face of every camera in the galaxy fixed squarely on her, what might make a less hardened person anxious only made her angry, or occasionally amused, or even bored if the circumstances were right. But this- being so exposed, not knowing the limits of what Liara saw or could see, not having control over something as central to her identity as her own thoughts- that frightened her. What privacy was there, in a galaxy where someone else could do that? Was this how asari did interrogation? No, they were far too diplomatic for that, but the strictures of social discourse didn't make it impossible, merely impolite.

_Liara's not the asari government. She is your friend, as odd a friendship as it might be. She wants to bring an end to Saren's plans as much as anyone._ Shepard blew out a breath and walked to Liara's lab.

The doctor was paging through a journal on her datapad. She glanced up as the hatch slid shut behind the commander and smiled warmly. "Good morning, Shepard."

"Good morning." She perched, awkwardly, on a stool across from the scientist, and crossed and uncrossed her legs. "I've been thinking about your suggestion."

"Which suggestion was that?"

"I think you're right." She licked her lips. "In an ideal world, someone like you, with the right background, would've gotten the vision and the cipher, but we don't live there. The best I can do with it is place it in your hands."

Liara set aside her reading. "I disagree. That knowledge was given to a person who was in a position to do something with it. To make people listen. I've been trying to spread my theory on Prothean extinction for decades, and I couldn't even get my own colleagues to hear me. This sad history falling into the hands of a woman who was about to become a spectre, commanding a ship with the ability to outsmart a dreadnought of alien design? That was an act of the goddess."

"Captain Anderson had command of the _Normandy _during Eden Prime," Shepard corrected lamely.

"Be that as it may." Liara leaned forward, covering Shepard's hand with her own. "Have you thought about what I said, on Feros?"

She cleared her throat. "I had a few things on my mind then, Liara."

"Granted. But I hope you did not mistake my meaning. Isolating yourself is the worst possible thing to do right now. You've been handed an impossible task, and you're doing a beautiful job- but you need every ounce of help you can get. This is far too vast for any one person regardless of talent or resolve."

"Why do you think I'm here?" Her scowl gave away her discomfort as much as her irritation.

"If not for you, I would be dead, or a… a thrall, like Shiala. I owe you everything. Please, let me help you. Freely, not grudgingly."

The asari was doing that thing of hers, where her eyes got very wide and earnest, and her entire face, from her fixed blue skull crenellations to the dark freckles on her cheeks, radiated sincerity. Shepard wondered, not for the first time, if it was naivety or Liara's brand of diplomacy. If the latter, it didn't bode well for if and when they encountered her mother, who was surely even more practiced.

Nonetheless, it had the predictable effect. Shepard was a reasonably callous woman, but offering belligerence to that face was like running over the neighbor's cat just because you could. "I'm doing the best I can. You think this should be simple or easy, but it's neither."

"I understand." She drew back, laying her forearms on her knees with her palms turned upwards. "Well, you know what they say about practice."

Shepard shook her head, chuckling despite herself, and took her hands. "In this case, I don't believe that's true, but what the hell. Here's hoping."

She closed her eyes and steadied her breath. The uncomfortably familiar veil fell over her mind, and she briefly felt as though she were falling. It was easier, slipping away to this place, and faster too. When she opened them, they were standing in the same spacious wooden room as before, the subconscious expression of the seat of her mind.

The central chamber seemed larger, though the four long halls still extended towards each of the cardinal directions. Less remarkable than the increased area was the fact that the parquet floor was covered in bits of cardstock with handwritten notes, connected to each other by an enormous tangle of colored ribbon. Even stranger, the web appeared indifferent to gravity, filling the air above the floor as well, up to as high as Shepard could easily reach.

Liara, dressed once more in the long gown, plucked one of the cards down to reading height and scanned the contents. "You've been doing some deep thinking about this."

Shepard found herself wearing loose khakis rolled low on her hips, with a black tank top tucked into the band. Her hair fell down around her shoulders. There were flip-flops on her feet. _Well, Liara wanted me to be more relaxed. _"Is that what this is? My thought process regarding the Protheans?"

"Not only the Protheans." She snagged a card near the center of the web, with at least a dozen colored threads coming off it. _Saren _was emblazoned on its front in bold black.

She cocked her head at it. "My imaginary handwriting is tidier than in real life."

Selecting the orange ribbon at random, she followed it to the next card, labeled _Benezia_, and from there, _Sovereign_. A blue strand off that card led to _Prothean Artifacts_, which spawned child cards like _Citadel, Relays, Conduit, _and _Therum._ "The colors represent subject groups?"

"Apparently." Liara lingered on _Benezia_, and followed a line out. She held up a card labeled _Hannah_. "What does your mother have to do with any of this?"

Shepard gave it a glance, her face heating. "She doesn't. I'm not a Swiss watch, you know?"

"A what?" she asked blankly.

"I meant even my compartmentalization isn't flawless. There's some leakage between this and everything else going on in my life." Which was the heart of why she didn't want Liara here.

Liara continued to inspect the web. "Why is there a red line leading from Feros to a card labeled 218?"

She experienced a brief moment of panic and the few strands of red abruptly vanished from the tangle of cards. "It's not important. This one here's almost like a vid. I think it's the beacon."

There were so many ribbons coming off that particular card that the edges were more hole than cardstock. Shepard grasped the blue line and followed it out. "Feros. Ilos. Therum. Eden Prime. Mars."

"Planets. Why?"

The ribbon was silky between her fingers. "The cipher's doing. It's not just… whatever world that was, when you were last here. It keeps showing me colony after colony shrouded in devastation. I don't know if I've visited any of them in this reality, but…"

"You've got major sites of Prothean civilization on the brain."

"It's all pattern finding." Shepard moved further into the web. There was an edge of urgency and frustration to her voice. "All the pieces are in here, somewhere. I just have to put them together."

"The conduit is likely on one of the significant Prothean worlds." Liara pursed her lips. "I've compiled a list of every site I can find, but I'm not certain it amounts to much. They were spread over the whole of the galaxy, likely far more worlds than us. I'm certain if something like that were found it would not go overlooked."

"Maybe one of them can point the way." She abandoned that tact for the moment, and reached for an orange ribbon. It connected the beacon to Feros, Edolus, Banes, and, strangely, Anderson. "Where does this string start?"

"Hmm?" Liara saw the color she meant, and traced it back. "Orange appears to be Cerberus."

Shepard gave that due consideration, her arms crossed over the tank top. It was quite warm in this imaginary space, for whatever reason. She guessed she cared less for the cold than she suspected. Slowly, she said, "We found them in the same system we found you. And ExoGeni sent them samples. Who the hell are they, and why do they keep popping up?"

"You don't know? I thought your admiral was buying the information."

"I haven't heard anything." She kept staring at the cards. _Why did I tie them to Anderson?_

_Because Anderson keeps more than three decades of secrets safe, including from you, and he's surprised you with them more than once. _The observation was as obvious as it was uncomfortable. He knew about her findings. To not mention it still, assuming he knew anything, told her something about the scope of possibilities.

But it did spark another thought. "Look for any other commonalities between all the places we've already visited."

They both began searching the cards. Before too much longer, Liara said, "Krogan. On Therum and on Feros. We've never explained Saren's connection to the krogan."

"They could just be mercenaries." Shepard's tone was doubtful, however. She remembered the strange awkwardness of the krogan they'd encountered, and their uncanny similarity to one another. "We should bring it up to Wrex, get his insight."

"If you can get him to say more than two words on the subject, I'll be impressed." Liara held her hand out to the beacon card. "May I?"

She took a breath to steady herself. "Be my guest."

The impressions were almost too familiar now, the tang of blood, dirt, and molten rock in her nostrils, the thrumming in her ears from the reaper armaments, the primal panic in her gut. It was raw as a wound and vivid as a surgery, intended to cut and wound and linger in the mind of anyone who saw it. Whatever the Protheans meant to accomplish by leaving these beacons, they left an impression.

And now she had sets of constructed memories from at least a half-dozen different worlds. Different fronts, different scenery, same story. It was anywhere from a few moments to a few lifetimes when the vision finally cut them loose, leaving them once more in the wooden chamber with its ample golden sunlight and quiet calm.

She didn't know if it hit Liara like this, if the asari paid the same psychic cost for each review. From what Shepard could tell Liara was a passive observer within her mind. It wasn't a lack of gratitude- Shepard knew that the asari's help was all that allowed her a measure of objectivity about the beacon's message- but there was a vague degree of resentment at her placidity.

But what Liara said was, "I think that's enough for one day."

And then they were sitting once more in her lab, face to face, hand in hand. Shepard's eyes were slow to creak open, her breath slow to steady.

The asari archaeologist was as slow to withdraw her grasp. Their eyes met for a moment, a confused and complicated look, before Liara unexpectedly swooned, leaning against the lab bench for support.

Shepard's brow furrowed with concern. "Are you alright?"

"I'm fine." She closed her eyes and sucked in a breath. "It's exhausting, this melding. I'm the one doing all the heavy lifting to maintain the connection, and you…"

She laughed then, tiredly. "You have a much more resistant mind than most. I'm accustomed to asari, but even among the alien species whose minds I have touched, you stand apart."

Shepard didn't know what to say to that. There was a faint feeling of guilt. "I can get you some orange juice from the mess?"

Liara stared at her like she just demonstrated the depths of her oblivion.

She cleared her throat. "They give it to humans after we donate blood. I don't know. It sounded right, in my head."

The asari softened. "I'll be fine. I just need to rest awhile."

The commander took the hint and laid her hand on her shoulder for a long moment before vacating the room.

/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\

Lieutenant Alenko perched at a spare workbench he'd taken over in engineering. There was a lamp to illuminate tiny, delicate components- purloined from med bay, with Chakwas' blessing- and an assortment of delicate tools. Engines weren't his area of expertise and he was rubbish with most mechanical engineering projects, not being his focus, but hand him a circuit board or a blown power supply and he could do some magic. A small reminder all those years of school weren't entirely useless.

The current subject of his interest lay in pieces across the surface. He'd segregated the chassis and the components having nothing to do with the problem neatly off to one side. Anyone undertaking hardware repair at a serious level was only sloppy about their work once. It was too easy to lose or damage small pieces.

He had a magnifying glass in hand, scrutinizing the damaged circuits, when the elevator chimed and Garrus Vakarian stepped off the carriage, momentarily distracting his attention.

The turian sauntered over. "What in the world is that?"

Alenko glanced at the pieces. "It's a datapad. Or will be again, soon."

"I can see that. I meant what are you doing with it?"

He answered his curious gaze with a sound of exasperation. "You wouldn't believe how often Shepard breaks these things. She's always whacking them, or dropping them, or downloading questionable software from the extranet to solve some temporary problem. It's a small miracle the thing doesn't give up out of sheer existential desperation every time she picks it up."

Garrus was puzzled. "And she assigns the third-ranking officer on her ship, in the middle of a demanding war, to fix her personal electronics?"

He sighed and turned back to his work. "She doesn't ask me."

"You just… kidnap the datapad and fix it up for her."

Alenko flushed a bit. "She's always misplacing her datapad anyway."

The turian was still following a line of thought. "And you don't tell her about it."

"Nah. That would spoil the whole thing."

"I see." He turned it over. "There are better ways to flirt with a girl, you know."

His blush deepened. "This way works for me."

"I find it hard to believe this way has ever worked for you."

It was true. Alenko sidestepped the issue. "We're not really talking about this, are we?"

"No." If turians could grin, Garrus was doing so. "Good luck with those repairs."


	31. Chapter 31

Commander Shepard was stretched out on her couch downloading every scrap of news on the Traverse she could find. It was a good couch, not so firm she rolled right off it, not so yielding she disappeared in its depths, and most importantly no lumps. The base of her skull balanced against the left armrest while her ankles dangled over the other. It was a continuous problem since she finished her final growth spurt sometime between eighteen and nineteen years of age. The navy built to a scale suitable for the limited space of a ship environment.

There was some irony in the fact that an N7-ranked officer of the Alliance and a Council spectre with access to some of the most formidable intelligence operations in the galaxy was scanning the thirty-odd major networks in search of a lead, but it beat wringing her hands. Her last great idea was an almost complete bust. They found evidence of geth, but not actual geth, and from what she surmised there hadn't been a single synthetic on that rock for months. Not that it spared her marines getting rushed by husks. They were a little beat up; shields weren't much against the husks' bare-handed assaults. Shepard herself caught a decent blow to her ribs.

Liara wanted to bring the dragon's teeth and other artifacts aboard for study, but Shepard was damned if she was going to allow something so unholy to contaminate her cargo bay. The geth's instruments made her skin crawl. The archaeologist called the impulse irrational, because surely objects used for horrible purposes were still merely objects without intrinsically sinister properties, but until the need for information grew desperate Shepard trusted her gut.

Now they were back in intersystem space, FTL drive fully engaged, trying to pick a new destination. She tabbed forward to the next extranet site and reached for her mug of cocoa.

"Commander, we've received a transmission from the _SSV Reese_." Serviceman Santos, Bakari's third-shift relief in communications, was hesitant over the comm as she interrupted the commander's reverie.

Shepard's brow furrowed. "The _Reese_?"

"It's corvette class, ma'am."

_Why does that sound familiar?_ "Which officer sent the transmission?"

The comm officer cleared her throat. Most of the crew had grown comfortable with their infamous and occasionally flippant C.O., but Santos kept to herself. "Lieutenant Commander Laine, ma'am."

_Oh_, _hell_. Shepard stared into space a long moment. "Put him through. I'll take it in the comm room."

She stood, straightened her uniform, and left her cabin.

Laine appeared in the transmission holo much as she remembered- auburn haired, green eyed, square jawed, with a stocky frame and boyish good looks. He broke into a smile as her image loaded on his end. "Hey, Bo. You look like hell."

"Rag." She crossed her arms, leaning back on a heel. "Or should I say Lieutenant Commander? I hope you're not expecting congratulations on the promotion."

His face fell. "C'mon, Nath, don't be like that."

"You know I hate it when people call me that."

"What, I'm not allowed to pull your leg a little? I've known you since we were making camo gear out of leaves in Brazil." It was true. They'd been assigned to the same N1 cadre in Rio back in '74, two of the relatively few recruits to graduate the training.

Not that it made any difference.

"We're not friends, Laine." Her words were clipped, crisp, businesslike. "And before you tempt me to recount why, I'll remind you that all of these calls are fully logged and this might not be one of those things you want on record."

"That was a different time and difficult situation, you know I'm right. It's been months. Can't we just agree to let it go?" he needled, testily.

She ignored the question. Laine's whining grated on her nerves. "What do you want? I'm busier than a cat in a rat factory and I swear to god if you rang my bell just to-"

"No." Her reticence clearly irritated him, but he swallowed it. "I need a favor."

"You have a hell of a way of asking."

Laine frowned. "This is important. You may think I'm full of shit, but not this time."

"I don't think it, I know it." Then she relaxed, and rubbed her forehead. "What did you get yourself into now?"

"While you've been chasing Saren's tail all over the Traverse, the rest of us have been managing the collateral. A lot of people who don't like the Alliance very much are using our preoccupation with the war as an opportunity to strike."

"Imogen hinted at something like that in a card she sent. There's no other reason she'd let herself get stuck in the Verge, she hates it there." Shepard chewed her lip. She knew Laine, his experiences and what caught his interest. "You're talking about batarians."

He nodded. "I've been monitoring a splinter cell for six months, wandering back and forth over the Traverse/Terminus border. They've been quiet until a few weeks ago, when everything started to tick up. Yesterday, they disappeared."

"Disappeared?" She was bewildered.

"Vanished. It's like they never existed. So whatever they were planning is about to go down. I can't say more about it on this line."

She shook her head. "That's troubling, but I'll be honest, I don't have the resources right now to run down something like that. No offense, but compared to the geth threat this is small time."

"I wouldn't be so quick to write it off."

Shepard snorted exasperation. "Why are you bugging me, anyway? Your coordinates are in Kahoku's turf. Ask him for help."

"Kahoku's missing. Probably dead. They're keeping it hushed up because apparently he was going behind the brass on something big. The command's in chaos until they figure out the highest-ranked officer down the chain who isn't implicated." He shrugged. "Anyway, I don't need your personal assistance. I need access to intelligence sources beyond what the Alliance can give me."

"Kahoku's AWOL?" She blinked. "When did that happen?"

"Two weeks ago? What does it matter?" Laine moved back on topic. "About those intel sources…?"

"They're not all that much better."

"But they are a little better."

"Yes." She blew out a breath. "Alright. I'll see what I can do."

"Thanks." He paused, licked his lips. "I did want to congratulate you, on the spectre thing. I just didn't know what to say. Grats on becoming the biggest media spectacle since Udina threw that fork at a state dinner?"

She laughed despite her best efforts not to, the sound leaking out around the hand that flew to her mouth. There was the slightest tinge of hysteria to it. Some days her life was downright absurd. "Do you think I could get him to do it again?"

"To divert attention? Nah, it'd take more than some airborne cutlery." Laine peered at her. "Seriously, Nathaly, I haven't seen you look like this since we were going through all those godawful endurance qualifiers. Are you ok?"

"It's a good thing we had all that training then, isn't it? This sort of situation might be what they had in mind." She was annoyed. "The damage is cosmetic. I'm fine."

"You're not just saying that?"

"I don't think you have the right to ask me that kind of question," she answered tartly.

"Jesus." He held up his hands, a gesture of surrender. "You never were one to use a hint when you could get your hands on a club. I'll stop. But I hope it gets better for you, I really do."

Shepard tried to find some token graciousness, but she couldn't count Laine as a person deserving of courtesy anymore, not after what she'd seen him do. She looked up at him. His expression was vaguely hopeful.

"Commander," she said in parting through gritted teeth.

Shepard cut the transmission before he could respond and turned towards the CIC without a backwards glance. The galaxy map stretched out before her. She began entering commands.

Pressly saw the incoming data and raised his eyebrows. "We're returning to the Citadel, ma'am?"

"Something's happened. I need to speak with Anderson, face-to-face." Admiral Kahoku struck her as a conscientious commander. Even if he got caught running around high command she doubted his instinct would trend towards abandoning his post. This stank of something bad- like his inquiries to the shadow broker yielded more of a harvest than he could manage.

_And if Anderson knows anything about this Cerberus, he's not going to tell me over a logged call._

Pressly waited a few moments for further information, and when none was forthcoming, merely nodded and began his preparations. "Aye, ma'am."

/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\

Anderson answered her request by ordering Shepard to meet him at an upscale lounge near the Alliance embassy. It was a watering hole for diplomats, a place for quiet and informal discussion, and she guessed the captain didn't want Udina's fingers in this.

It wasn't exactly her kind of place. The commander paused in the doorway, smoothing the front of her dress blues, and took in the pristine white surfaces, imitation sunlight bulbs, and soft piano music. It was lunchtime. Humans dressed in suits along with a handful of military personnel chatted over fussy salads and carefully plated slivers of meat. There were a few asari in the bar, a table of salarians, and not more than two or three turians. Silverware clattered against porcelain while ice clinked in glasses.

Captain Anderson was already seated. He set down his datapad as she approached. She took his invitation to sit, selecting the chair across from him. A server descended on her immediately to take her drink order and seemed irked when Shepard requested only water.

He sipped at his own drink, which looked to be iced tea, and watched her fold her hands atop the table. "I was glad you requested this meeting. I haven't had a report from you since Feros."

"Yes, sir. Hackett had us on special assignment, and our last planetfall was a waste of time. There hasn't been much to recount."

"Tell me about this raid. What made it a waste?"

She shook her head. "We got word that Colonial Affairs lost touch with a survey team. They were camped out on a planet within one of our sectors of interest."

"Sectors of interest?"

"Those maps intel back on Arcturus put together- geographic areas around systems known to have geth activity, or fit one of the mathematical patterns the numbers guys cooked up. They've not been much use so far, but you never know."

"Right. Carry on, Commander."

"We located their base from orbit and detected no signs of life. I sent a full team. Their underground barracks were overrun with husks- presumably members of the survey team." She winced, remembering, and rubbed her side. "We found dragon's teeth."

"Any idea why the geth took an interest?"

"No, sir. We did find something else, though. Another shrine, not unlike the one on Feros, but there was a tall object at the heart of it. This thing was strange, sir. Unsettling. The proportions were wrong, the curves were wrong, it almost hurt to look at it, but all the same, the eye was… drawn. We found several husks congregated around the artifact."

Anderson grew troubled. "And you don't believe that merited a report?"

"That wasn't the problem." Shepard traced a wrinkle in the tablecloth with a fingertip. "I thought the Alliance would try to recover it. So following extraction I ordered the _Normandy's _main cannon to fire three shots into the camp."

"You _what_?" Anderson was shocked. "Geth technology is very advanced. Studying it could give us a major edge down the road, against them or a new enemy."

She looked at him directly. "The only use anyone should make of that thing is to destroy it. We buried it deep in fire and rubble and I'm still not sure it was enough."

"That's not your choice to make."

"With all due respect, you didn't see it, sir. You didn't feel it throbbing in your head."

"If it's a weapon, then it's even more important that we put it in the hands of qualified scientists. And you wasted- what in hell were you thinking?" He looked her over. "It's unlike you to be superstitious."

She sat back in her seat. "I've given my account of the matter, sir. If others encounter similar devices, they should do the same, and that is my final opinion."

"So I see." Anderson drew a breath and set that topic aside. "You said you wanted to discuss Rear Admiral Kahoku's disappearance. He sent you to Edolus?"

Shepard nodded. "It's not his absence I want to talk-"

She was momentarily distracted by a ruckus at the bar. A turian was banging his glass on the counter and shouting. It was a strange sight from a member of such a disciplined culture. The rather harrassed bartender tried to mollify him, but the volume only increased.

"Commander," Anderson said, drawing her attention back.

"Right. I'm interested in the subject of his investigation into those dead marines we found."

They fell silent as the waitress returned with her ice water, and two small plates with what passed for a salad in the world of haute cuisine. It was a molded cylinder of cut greens and other vegetables about two centimeters high and three across. The dressing was splashed around it in decorative dots. Shepard prodded it cautiously with a fork.

Anderson chuckled. "I know shipboard rations are bad, but you look like you've never seen a salad before."

"No, sir. Just wondering how anyone manages to live off portions like this."

"I hope you don't mind that I ordered for you. I told them to put it on Udina's tab."

"Not at all." She resigned herself to the fussy fare and took a bite. The taste was pleasant enough, sweet orange laced with bitter greens. "There's a link between Saren and Kahoku. We found evidence of a group identified as Cerberus on both Edolus and Feros. Kahoku was tracking them when he vanished. I hoped you could tell me more."

"Cerberus." He almost spat the word. "You're sure?"

Shepard activated her omni-tool and sent the relevant information to Anderson's datapad. He reviewed it for several minutes while Shepard tried to stretch the remaining two bites of salad. "You're just full of good news today."

"So you do know something." Her intuition was satisfied.

"More than I'd like." He sighed. "Shepard, this isn't something you want a piece of."

"All I was able to uncover was some kind of manifesto from decades back and a few isolated incidents that may or may not be attributed to them. Everything else, and I mean everything, was code-word classified and I don't have the correct approvals for those records."

He leaned forward and folded his hands. "I see you won't be dissuaded. Cerberus is a paramilitary collection of human supremacists with a lot of money and a lot of dirt."

"Sounds like Terra Firma." Shepard was dismissive.

"Terra Firma is a political party. You might not like their philosophy, but they're not violent. Cerberus enforces their agenda with any tools available. Research, politics, terrorism, hit men, donations, sabotage- if it's a lever for manipulation, they've pulled it. They're extremely well organized, adaptable, and sharp."

"And they're tangled up with my investigation, so that kind of makes them my problem, sir. If you're expecting me to get scared and back off because they offed Kahoku-"

"Who told you that?" he asked sharply.

"Laine said there was speculation that Kahoku was likely dead."

"I didn't realize you were on speaking terms again."

"He's a fellow officer and I don't need to tell you that the N7 ranks are pretty thin." Her tone was stiff, professional. "I try not to let my personal feelings interfere with the required standard of decorum."

"One of these days you're going to tell me what the hell happened."

"I don't think so, sir," she replied politely. _After all, I lied about it too, afterwards._

"Well, I'd keep any speculation about Kahoku to yourself until we have proof." He let out a breath and shook his head. "Cerberus does have some connection to Saren that I don't fully understand, and maybe that's how they got brought into this. It's a stretch to call their role important based on the intel I've seen here."

"I find it hard to believe I've never heard of them, sir, if they're as persistent and connected as you say."

"We keep it close. Giving them a free microphone and recognition isn't a smart move." He gave her a level look. "And there's this. A lot of people think the Alliance should be stronger and more independent than it is. The service attracts individuals with that mentality, and Cerberus loves to poach from our ranks at every opportunity. Hell, early on they got an entire black ops lab to go rogue."

That raised a few flags. She wondered if they kept quiet in order to insulate Cerberus as the captain claimed, or purely out of establishment embarrassment. "I'd like to know more about their link to Saren, sir."

The conversation paused again as the server brought their entrée. It was two ounces of tofu on a saucer-sized bed of mashed carrot, topped with what looked like a deep-fried leaf. Shepard suppressed a sigh.

Anderson's was similar, though consisting of fish instead of bean curd. He dug in his fork. "I'm telling you, Shepard- let this one go. For your own good. There's a long, nasty history to this organization."

"Sir-"

"That's an order, Commander."

They ate in silence for several minutes. Shepard had known Anderson long enough to recognize he said all he intended to say. The war was the largest threat facing the Alliance since first contact. He wouldn't withhold information if he deemed it at all relevant. His lack of trust still grated more than she cared to admit.

Eventually, Anderson folded his napkin and pushed away from the table. Shepard stood automatically. His tone was once again mild, polite. "I need to get back to it. Always a pleasure, Commander."

"Yes, sir." She slid back into her seat as he departed, resting her chin in her hand and surveying the remains of her so-called meal with dismay. Who would possibly call this lunch? Where was the food? There couldn't be more than three hundred calories between the two dishes.

Just as she was contemplating if there was anywhere in the Presidium where she could grab a hot dog, the server returned, bearing some kind of cocktail on a tray. She set it down in front of the commander.

Shepard blinked in confusion. "I didn't order a drink."

"It seems you have an admirer." The woman glanced across the bar, towards an asari lounging in a chair like she owned the place, wearing a long red close-fit dress.

The drink was unrecognizable, though it smelled faintly of fruit and strongly of alcohol. She picked it up and carried it over to her anonymous benefactor. "I don't think we know each other."

The asari tilted her head up to get a better look at her, and offered a laughing smile that Shepard instantly recognized as an act. "Everyone knows Commander Shepard."

She didn't mince words. "I'm on duty so I can't drink, and even if I weren't, I'm not interested." She set the cocktail down in front of her. "Quite frankly, I'm starving, so if you don't mind."

"My proposition is more professional than romantic. It won't take but a second." She gestured towards the table. "Please, sit."

Her arms crossed and she stayed on her feet. "I don't know you've been talking to, but I take orders, not contracts. My services aren't for hire."

"My name is Nassana Dantius," she continued, as if Shepard hadn't spoken. "I'm with the asari diplomatic corps. And I've been on this Citadel too long not to know that spectres set their own agenda."

"Not this one."

"Are you always so terse?"

"As I said, I'm-"

"Hungry. So I gathered." She stopped a passing waiter. "Michael, could we get an hors d'oeuvres for the commander?"

Shepard fell into a chair with resignation. She couldn't afford to snub an asari diplomat, a fact of which Dantius was evidently aware. Her polite smile was a touch brittle. "What is it you wanted to discuss?"

"I have a… problem, of a personal nature." Some of her brisk veneer fell away. She swirled the rejected drink nervously. "It's my sister, Dahlia. She's been taken."

"You mean kidnapped, to exert influence on the asari through you."

"No." Dantius shook her head. "I'm not ranked highly enough for that. Our family is very wealthy, even by galactic standards, and they used her to extort credits from us."

"And you don't want to pay, or…?"

"We've already paid," she protested. "They've refused to release her as promised."

Shepard bit her lip and tried to think of a way to put it tactfully. "Ms. Dantius, it's unlikely she's still alive."

"I live in the world, Commander. I know the odds. But I've also expended quite a bit of money tracing this mercenary ship and I know the effort won't be wasted. All I need is for you to stage a rescue."

"Ok. I gotta ask- why me? There's a dozen asari spectres aboard the Citadel at any given time."

"For starters, because the coordinates of the ship are deep in the Traverse. Not a problem for a spectre, but still unofficially Alliance territory." She paused. "And because if it came out that I'd paid the ransom, I'd lose my position."

"The Citadel does not negotiate with terrorists?" she quoted lightly.

"This isn't funny. My sister is in mortal danger." Dantius sat up and leaned towards Shepard. "I can make it worth your while."

"I don't take bribes."

"Professionals deserve to be paid for their work. But that's not the real value. I don't have the influence to give a terrorist cell what it wants- release prisoners, reveal access codes. But promoting the integrity and reliability of a human spectre with a serious interspecies PR problem? That, I can do."

"And if I don't help you, you'll have some other choice words to spread around?" Shepard asked shrewdly.

Her smile was razor-edged. "You have a keen grasp of the situation."

They were interrupted as the turian at the bar started shouting again. The whole lounge was trying to ignore it. He seemed upset that his empty glass wasn't instantaneously refilled. His caterwauling set Shepard's teeth on edge. "Who the f- I mean, who is that?"

"General Oraka, retired." Dantius sighed. "When he's not too drunk to remember his own name, he's ranting about his mistress to anyone who will listen. It's sad."

Shepard dismissed it as irrelevant. "Your threat of blackmail is offensive and confronting me here like this is anything but professional, Ms. Dantius."

"Are you prepared to let an innocent woman die over it?" the asari asked sweetly.

"No." Shepard gritted her teeth. "No promises, but I'll do what I can."

"Thank you, Commander."

"Don't thank me. Not for this." Shepard rose and left the bar.

/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\

When his name came up in the first shore rotation after Shepard implemented Chakwas' advice, Lieutenant Alenko decided to make good on his promise to meet his friend for coffee. During mid-afternoon the Presidium walk was far less crowded than at breakfast. They were able to sit and watch the water while sipping leisurely from their paper cups and catching up.

"I've lived here for eight years now," Mat said, "And I still haven't gotten used to the idea of a space station having a lake. It's the height of impracticality. Getting the water here, out in the middle of nowhere, purely for aesthetic value- that requirement alone should have terminated the project."

"Spoken like a true pragmatist." Kaidan took a drink to hide his smile. Mat designed habitat systems for a living. He wouldn't find it funny.

He clearly wasn't fooled. "Laugh if you want, Kaidan. The Protheans were out of their minds building this place."

"You're talking about a civilization that left booby-trapped comm systems lying around for us to find and the Citadel is what makes you think they're crazy."

"And the sky. I mean, why? There's not even an anchor star out here."

"Maybe that's why. Even the Protheans had to come from a planet originally. It makes it feel more like home."

"Except every time you drop something you're reminded that you're living on a giant rotating inner tube."

"You chose to live here," Alenko pointed out.

"Yeah, yeah." Mat slouched back, rather put out. "Life has a way of pulling stunts like that. Sort of speaking of which- how'd you get lucky enough to end up on the _Normandy_? That's nuts."

"I don't know. I just go where I'm told." He fidgeted with the plastic wrapper of a blueberry muffin. Buying it seemed like a better idea before he realized it was roughly the size of a small moon, and that he was already full. "Anderson picked the crew, before Shepard inherited the ship. Apparently he wanted me for this. I'm not complaining."

"I'm no soldier, but I can't imagine he was pulling names out of a hat." Mat paused. "Sometimes I get the feeling there's a lot you never told me about your work."

"Sometimes I get that feeling too." Alenko took another sip of coffee.

Mat snorted. "So I have to ask. What's Shepard like? The news makes her look pretty harsh and not a little crazy."

"She's…" He thought about it. "She is a little crazy, but not in a bad way. I've never met anyone like her. She's smart, experienced, talented… When I say talented I mean if you want a fair fight you better bring a lot of guys, and she's maybe the best shot I've seen in real life. Once, she climbed down a hundred meter crumbling wall like it was nothing. I was freaking out the whole way."

"She's a good marine." Mat leaned forward, resting his arms on the table. "But what she _really _like? There's got to be more to it."

"I realize there's this whole mystique surrounding N7 commendations out in the public, but the math doesn't lie. Of those selected for N1 training less than a hundredth of a percent ever go up for N7. You don't get that particular commendation for being good. You get it for being the best the service has to offer. It's not any deeper than that."

Mat set down his mostly empty cup. "And getting there drives them a little round the bend? The things she says on the news, about aliens and the geth… It's like she's reading from a different script than the rest of us. I don't understand it."

"There's a particular psychological profile most spec ops agents fit," he acknowledged, carefully, not wanting to say something Shepard wouldn't share herself. "But she's still human. She likes old books and fast cars. She's got a sick father she worries about a lot. And she all but mainlines hot chocolate." Alenko shook his head. "She deals with so much crap it would drown an ordinary person, but there she is every day, doing her job anyway. You'd never know it. If her comments seem a little off-color, maybe it's because she's working from a broader perspective."

Mat gave him a sidelong look. Alenko's expression turned sardonic. "What?"

"Nothing." He jerked his chin towards the muffin. "I never thought I'd see you leave perfectly good food uneaten."

Alenko spared it a glance but was not diverted. "You all but rolled your eyes at me. What did you want to say?"

He made an annoyed sound. "Just that I've heard you say more about Shepard in the last five minutes than I heard about your last girlfriend the whole four months you were dating."

"You asked," he protested.

"You answered at some length," Mat observed, his tone dry.

"She's interesting. So what? A lot of other people think so, too."

His friend decided to switch topics. "You buy into her kumbayah routine? We all just need to work together? Because last I checked, it wasn't turian colonies being targeted."

Alenko sighed. "There's a lot more to this than the geth. I can't say anymore. But if you knew what I know, her stance would make more sense."

"Why don't we know?"

"Because we don't know all of it yet, either," he said patiently. This was well-trodden ground between them. "Just because you know how to make a bomb doesn't mean you teach anyone who asks."

"And this information is that dangerous?" Mat's expression remained skeptical.

_If we went public with the reaper threat now, it'd provoke either widespread panic or widespread laughter. We need tangible proof- and a plan. _He was glad some days it wasn't his duty to make those decisions. "Sometimes you just have to trust us. That's the bargain citizens make with their government."

"Sure. The Alliance has a great track record with that. Torfan, BAaT-"

"You know the worst part of serving in the navy?" Alenko sat back and folded his arms. "The news rarely airs stories when we do our job right, so people only remember the times we screw up."

They exchanged cross looks for a few long moments, before Mat shook his head and chuckled. "That went fast in an ugly direction."

"No kidding." Alenko had to laugh as well. "You'd think after ten years we could stop having the same argument."

"Or at least invent some fresh talking points." Mat's gaze shifted to a spot over Alenko's shoulder. "Speak of the devil."

Alenko's brow furrowed as he glanced behind him. Shepard was coming up the Presidium walk at a fast clip, her hands tucked under her arms. She was frowning.

He waved. Her expression turned to surprise as she spotted them. He got to his feet by rote as she approached. "Commander."

"Lieutenant, there is no civilization in this galaxy," she announced without preamble, plopping into a seat. Shepard looked harangued.

"Ma'am?" he asked, reclaiming his chair.

She rested her elbows on the table, propping her chin in her hands and groaning. "Every real restaurant in walking distance of the embassy is closed until dinner. It's all snack food."

Her eyes lit on the blueberry muffin, with not more than two bites out of it. "Are you going to finish that?"

He pushed it towards her. "All yours. I already ate."

She fell on it like she'd never seen sustenance before. He shook his head, amused. "Weren't you having lunch with Anderson?"

"You never saw a place make such a sick joke of a meal." She stuffed a large chunk of muffin into her mouth. "Rabbits couldn't live off it."

Mat was watching with disconcerted fascination. Shepard caught his stare, chewed and swallowed. "Who's your friend?"

"Sorry, ma'am. This is Mat Noguchi."

She held out her hand. "Nathaly Shepard."

He shook it. She turned back to her scavenged food. "The whole conversation was a waste on top of the almost complete lack of a meal. It's not that Anderson doesn't know anything relevant, it's that he won't tell me. And that's not like him."

"The captain might be a mentor to you, but this can't be the first time he's withheld information."

"No." She wiped crumbs off her mouth. "But he always has a reason. This time it was like running into a brick wall. All he'd say is it was too dangerous. For me. I mean, not to be immodest, but seriously?"

Mat cleared his throat. "I don't suppose I can ask what the heck you're talking about?"

She raised an eyebrow. "You a reporter?"

He was affronted. "I'm an engineer."

"I came to the Citadel to chase a lead, and my commanding officer is waving me off while lying to me about it," she stated, matter-of-factly. "It's frustrating."

Mat was taken aback by her frank disclosure. "I can still talk to reporters, you know."

"What exactly would you say?" Shepard snorted. "You ran into Commander Shepard in a coffee shop where she revealed the highly sensitive information that she was having trouble following a lead? Why else do I ever come back to this station except to do research or have my brow beat?"

"That's… well-reasoned."

"I've been at this awhile." She slouched back from the remains of the muffin, not more than the wrapper and a handful of crumbs. "Trust me, I'm not going to publicly discuss something you shouldn't know, and even if I did, I've known him long enough now to realize that he doesn't make friends with dishonorable people."

Shepard pointed at Alenko, who went slightly pink. "Ma'am, I know Captain Anderson was the quick route, but surely he wasn't the only?"

"I can put in a request with the archivist on Arcturus, but the war'll be over before it clears the system. That place is slower than a minivan with a busted stabilizer."

"Hackett could fast track it. You did him a favor."

"I followed orders."

"You followed them well." He shrugged. "Could be worth something, ma'am."

"Maybe." She chewed her lip. "I'm going to find another muffin. Or bust into a vending machine, or something."

"There's a diner just off the ring in Zakera Ward that runs all hours," Mat offered.

"Really?" She broke into a smile of giddy relief. "I am so glad I met you."

"He's married," Alenko said without thinking.

She regarded him, bemused. "Thank you for the intel, L.T. As you were."

Alenko stood again, face burning, as Shepard departed. Mat raised his eyebrows. Alenko sighed with exasperation. "She's my superior officer. I'm required to stand when she does."

His friend snickered. "Sure. I saw you watch her go. You have a problem, man."

He buried his face in his hands with a groan. "Tell me something I don't know."

/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\

"Let me get this straight," Joker said, still full of disbelief. "Some asari diplomat corners you in a bar, _threatens you_, and we're actually going to do what she asked?"

They were back aboard the _Normandy_, headed back to Artemis Tau on Nassana Dantius' intelligence regarding her sister. Dahlia was abducted from asari space by a small group of mercs, unaffiliated with any of the larger armies, less than three weeks prior. The ransom was paid from a private account almost immediately. The credits weren't hard to trace- Shepard's spectre rank finally paid off. The bank sent over the records within an hour of receiving the request. Unfortunately, the account holder proved to be a pseudonym and the merc leadership remained unknown.

This cluster was as far away from home as an asari could get without crossing into either the Terminus or batarian space. Clearly, the mercs wanted to remove any chance of rescue or asari military intervention from the equation. Why they'd keep Dahlia after receiving the payment was a mystery. Kidnapping was a lucrative gig, but failing to adhere to the terms wouldn't encourage future victims to pay up.

Shepard turned back to her pilot.

"I'm not worried about her threat. But if she wants to play, I've got some game." She smiled humorlessly. "Dantius let slip she'd lose her job if her attempt to settle with the kidnappers came to light. How good is it going to look when a spectre very publicly saves her dear sister from space pirates and she throws a hissy fit?"

Joker was disconcerted. "So you get the gratitude of the asari for saving the girl, and still manage to screw Nassana?"

"Yep. I'll earn a little goodwill with the asari without her help, she'll lose her job, and there's nothing she can do about it without appearing callous." Shepard folded her arms, smug. "And we'll also rescue Dahlia in the bargain. It's not all about teaching lessons."

"How are you going to explain stumbling across this mess? It's not like this is a high-traffic system."

"Retracing our steps, searching for missed evidence, of course. We have been here before."

He shook his head. "Damn, Commander. Remind me never to get on your bad side."

"See if you can raise this merc ship. I'd like to speak with her skipper and see if we can't come to a peaceful resolution. Who knows, he may decide putting a spectre in the mix makes this job more trouble than it's worth."

"Aye aye, ma'am."

Shepard retreated to the CIC. The _MSV Fedele _was a standard turian frigate, a generation behind the benchmark, probably bought up at a scrap yard. It would have been stripped of its artillery prior to sale, but that was easy to replace if you knew where to ask. Extranet schematics of similar ships revealed no surprises. The turians were a disciplined, orderly people. Their vessels had none of the romance of human ships, with their odd corners and hidden bolt holes. During her youth, Shepard excelled at locating them on ships and stations alike. She'd lay money the _Einstein _still had a few of her morose pre-teen journals hidden under the floorboards.

Assuming no modifications, it shouldn't be difficult for the _Normandy _to sneak up on the _Fedele _and dock with the rear hatch. From there, Shepard's strike team could storm through the CIC and secure the bridge and all navigation capability, or alternatively flow down to engineering and assume control of propulsion and life support. Both options presented risks. In the end, she decided to order breather helmets and take the bridge.

The comm crackled. "We've got the _Fedele _in sight, ma'am. Her captain's waiting on the line. Sounds like an asari. She didn't care for our hail."

Shepard glanced at the ceiling. "What's our ETA?"

"Two hours out."

"Roger. I'm headed to the comm room."

Shepard activated the link and watched the asari captain materialize on her holo. She was solidly built, layers of muscle evident beneath the expensive but well-worn hardsuit. Her amber eyes blazed. "Alliance law doesn't mean much out here. What do you want with the _Fedele_?"

The commander was unfazed. "This is Spectre Nathaly Shepard, and the _Normandy_ is my ship. You should know better than to hide your dirty laundry in my backyard."

"I don't give a fuck who you are. Keep your nose out of my business."

"I'll cut to the chase." Shepard shifted her weight, her lips pressed together in a hard line. "I'm looking for Dahlia Dantius."

"You've got her," the captain spat, crossing her arms. "I'll ask one more time- what is it you want?"

Shepard's mouth opened, and closed. Confusion set in. "What?"

"Oh, now you're going to play stupid with me?"

"You're Dahlia?" Shepard was still grasping after the facts like she had dirt kicked in her eyes.

"That's Captain Dantius to you." She jabbed a finger at Shepard. The gesture lost none of its hostility in transmission. "I know who you have on board. You can tell Detective Vakarian that the doctor paid for his passage, all nice and legal. Hell, I'll even show you the credit statement."

Shepard tried to reassert control of the situation, riding on sheer instinct. "You don't get to make that decision. We need to inspect your ship. Fail to comply, and we will forcibly board and I can't vouch for the safety of you and your crew."

"Try it, and we'll see who winds up dead. This isn't the Citadel where citizens have to play nice with invasive C-Sec assholes." She reached forward to punch the termination. "_Fedele _out."

The comm went dead. Shepard stared at it a long moment, trying to make sense of what just happened. She rubbed her forehead. "Joker!"

"Ma'am?"

"If Garrus isn't in my quarters in the next five minutes, tell him he can damn well hitchhike home."

Even Joker knew better than to argue with her when she adopted that tone. Shortly thereafter, the hatch slid open, admitting the turian detective. "Commander? I was told-"

She turned towards him, absolutely livid. "What do you know about Dahlia?"

"What?" He was taken aback. "Up until a few days ago, I never heard of her."

Shepard laughed, sarcastic. "She's sure heard of you."

"The captain of the _Fedele _let you speak with her?"

"She _is _the captain of the _Fedele._" Shepard kicked at the couch. "Nassana didn't want me to save her sister. She wanted me to kill her sister. Having a pirate in the family can't do much for her career advancement. And Dahlia dropped your name. Why?"

"I have no idea." Garrus got a look at her face, and added, "Shepard, I swear. I have no better idea what this is about than you. What else did she say?"

"She mentioned something about a doctor. Sound familiar?"

Garrus sucked in a breath. "It can't be…"

"It can't be what?"

His mandibles flared. "Shortly before we met, I worked a case involving the black market organ trade. A salarian was at the heart of it, Dr. Saleon. Real sick bastard. I spent seven months tracking down the location of his laboratory, but it wasn't what we expected."

Shepard recalled her research when she was looking for Garrus, right after Eden Prime. "I think I saw a news story about that investigation. Trade in body parts has been problematic since the dawn of modern medicine."

"Usually, it's just tissue in vats, without any of the safety protocols or regulations required for artificial organs. Sometimes it's a sick freak with a knife harvesting from homeless or other vulnerable populations." Garrus shook his head. "It's not always even organs. I've seen more than a few krogan suffering sepsis because the testicle transplants they thought they were buying turned out to be a wad of animal tissue."

She started to press on with another question, before her brain caught up to what he'd actually said. "Wait- testicle transplants? Is that really a thing?"

"Superstition and homeopathy. Some krogan think the transplants provide a cure or treatment for the genophage. They can go for ten thousand credits apiece."

"Ok." That raised a thousand other questions, none of them directly relevant. She ran a hand over her hair. "What made Saleon's operation different?"

"It's a long story, Shepard. Are you sure you want to talk about this now?"

"According to Dahlia, your Dr. Saleon is on board the _Fedele_, and I've got about ninety minutes before I need to decide whether we take the ship. So talk."

"He's on the ship?" Garrus' eyes bugged out. "Shepard, we have to board. We can't let him get him get away, not again."

Shepard settled on the couch and crossed her legs. "I think you better start at the beginning."

"I got my start in C-Sec investigating the black market on the Citadel. Most of it's harmless. What do I care if someone wants to sell bootleg Blasto vids?" The humor faded. "The organ trade, not so much. Saleon tipped his hand by being greedy. He flooded the market with his wares and set off my suspicions. DNA analysis of a sample led us to a turian who was both very much alive and convinced he never lost his liver."

"The liver can be transplanted in pieces. He didn't have to lose all of it."

Garrus perched on the coffee table, folding his hands across his knees. "True, but that wasn't the case here. Our investigation revealed he'd worked briefly for a geneticist, the salarian doctor under discussion. But there was nothing at his lab- none of the equipment you'd need to grow cloned organs. His official work wasn't even in the same subject area."

"Sounds like a dead end." Shepard was military, not police. Investigation was novel territory. She'd done her fair share of recon, but usually, her superiors decided what to do with it unless the situation went critical, like during Elysium. More frequently she went into a mission to recover or destroy a previously identified target, whether a person, object, or data, and questions of morality never entered into it.

Being a spectre came with a significantly increased expectation of initiative. It was possible Garrus had something to teach her in this area, when he wasn't treating their mission like a spaghetti western, anyway.

The turian continued, "I brought in a few more of his staffers, trying to crack the case. One of them started bleeding out in the middle of the interrogation room. It was brutal. Our emergency medical team barely managed to stabilize him. Which is where the story gets really strange."

Her brow furrowed. "Are you sure you didn't rip this from one of those late night crime serials?"

Garrus laughed. "No- it's just the kind of career that leaves you with a lot of odd stories."

"What'd the medical team find?"

"There were incisions all over his body. Someone had cut into him again, and again, and again. These 'employees' were walking, breathing test tubes."

"He was growing the organs _inside _his workers?" Shepard had thought she was beyond disgust. "That's sick."

"It gets worse," he said grimly. "Most of them were poor, with little education or options. He'd pay them a small percentage of the sale, but only if the organ grew to a useable condition. Those that didn't develop properly were left in-situ. Most of them were total mess, medically speaking. Systemic dysfunction, chemical imbalances, you name it."

Shepard took that in for a long moment. "Alright. So how does Saleon end up on a merc ship on the edge of the Traverse? I can't imagine you letting someone like that take a walk."

"You want to know why I quit C-Sec? Why I get worked up over useless rules and regulations?" Garrus' eyes flashed. "He blew his lab, grabbed as many of his test subjects as he could, and boarded a ship. By the time we realized what was happening, they were off the Citadel and headed for the relay. He threatened to kill his staff if we made any attempt to stop him."

"I doubt you let that stop you."

"I gave the order to shoot them down, but the Executor countermanded me. He was worried about the hostages and the potential for civilian casualties if pieces of the ship collided with the Citadel. I told him the hostages were dead anyway, but it didn't matter."

"He made the right call. You were right about the hostages, but he was right about the civilians. It's better to pursue and disable when you're that close to a space station carrying eleven million people."

Garrus' expression twisted into something ugly. "They tried. They were too slow. He made it to the relay and then he was gone. I kept looking, but he managed to stay off the radar. Until today. Somewhat ironically, I got handed Saren's case as a penalty for criticizing the Executor's decision- his reputation was impeccable. No one expected it to turn up any evidence of wrongdoing. It was an insult."

A few minutes passed as they regarded each other in the aftermath of his horrific recounting. Shepard sat forward and shook her head at the ground. "It's a hell of a story. I almost wish I didn't believe you."

Garrus was almost in a panic. "Shepard, I can't let him get away again. Not after what he's done, the suffering he's caused, the abuses he's orchestrated. And I don't think you can either."

Shepard was piecing events together in her head. She spoke slowly. "Saleon escapes justice. He probably switches ships a few times, looking for an ideal world to restart his lab. The Traverse fits. The Alliance can't hold order here as well as we'd like to think but it's not as cutthroat as the Terminus. Perfect for an illicit scientist wanting to enjoy his comforts and peddle his wares."

Garrus grunted agreement. "He hires Dahlia's mercs because he knows C-Sec's still looking for him, and he wants the extra security. He has to be headed to his final destination with all his people and equipment."

"It feels right." She leaned back, staring at the ceiling and twiddling her thumbs in her lap. "Does Saleon have any combat skills beyond precision scalpel work?"

He lit up. "You'll do it?"

"We're here. Nassana tried to fool me and that doesn't sit so well. There are mercenaries willing to protect and transport known criminals flying next to one of our colonies and that doesn't sit so well, either. And Saleon has it coming."

"No, he doesn't have any combat training that I'm aware of, but he knew how to play C-Sec, straight up the book. He'll probably try threatening his test subjects again."

"No, because this time there's a spectre in the mix, and as you said, he knows Citadel procedure." Shepard's voice had a strange edge.

Garrus frowned. "I don't follow."

"Nassana tipped me off to something, and I've had some time in cruise to examine it." Shepard rubbed her forehead. "She said 'professsionals deserve to be paid for their work'. And it turns out, in as far as public records are available, I'm the poorest spectre out there by an order of magnitude. In some cases, several orders of magnitude."

"You sound like Executor Pallin." He was dismissive. "Spectres fill a vital role in the galaxy."

"I don't deny it, but the funny thing is, that Council stipend doesn't stretch very far." She rapped her knuckles on the table. "It's clear most spectres have an interesting and not entirely on the books relationship with the galaxy outside the Citadel. Why or how deep it goes is neither here nor there, but my guess is this guy is going to be too busy trying to buy me off to try that sort of tactic."

"And Dahlia?"

"Is not going down without a fight." Shepard smiled. "This is going to be fun."


	32. Chapter 32

The VI chimed softly as _Normandy's _docking tube formed a hard seal against the rear hatch of the _Fedele._ Joker affirmed their status over the comm. "Ma'am, we have hard lock."

"Roger." Shepard nodded to Williams, who hit the switch to open _Normandy's _outer hatch. It revealed a scarred metal exterior of the _Fedele_ with aging labels in turian script. Clearly keeping the paint fresh, or indeed any kind of maintenance whatsoever, was not high on her skipper's list. They proceeded into the docking tube, a short protuberance of plastic and metal connecting the two ships, and the hatch shut smoothly behind them.

Shepard gave _Fedele's _battered back door a once-over. "Get it open."

"Aye, ma'am." Williams and Garrus approached the hatch of the _Fedele_. The VI yelled a warning about decontamination procedures. Shepard disabled the audio output.

The fourth member of their boarding party, Urdnot Wrex, checked the action on his shotgun while they waited. The commander arched a single red eyebrow underneath the clear polycarbonate mask of her breather helmet. "Restless?"

"Eager," he grunted. "You have a nice boat, but I'm tired of staring at the walls."

"I'd think a merc would be used to long hauls across the galaxy." Shepard was amused. Her gaze shifted to the two working the lock. "When will my hatch be available?"

"Almost got it, ma'am."

Wrex smiled. "Usually, traveling with other freelancers is as entertaining as the actual fight."

"Things can get a little tense?"

"Sure. Gambling, boasting, short tempers. The usual." He eyed her. "You know, you never asked me why I was interested in Saren."

"Saren had to be dirty for years, if not decades. You have a beef with him. I imagine you're hardly alone."

"Yeah, but this was strange," he said slowly.

Shepard tilted her head. "If it was important, you'd have forced it down my throat long before now."

"I wasn't sure it was. Still not sure you'll buy it." He studied her through his own mask, with that almost predatory grin that was his trademark. "That turian was up to all kinds of-"

Williams twisted the latch bolting the _Fedele's _hatch closed, and a ball of fire ripped through the docking tube.

The next two seconds passed too quickly for Shepard to recall with any clarity. She was blinded. Her shields went down almost instantaneously, but not before absorbing enough of the blast's concussive force to save her life. Her hands scrabbled in the darkness, pure instinct, seeking any kind of handhold to prevent being blown into empty space. Her gloved fingers snagged against a discontinuity in smoothness, a warped panel, maybe. Her body's movement arrested.

"Status!" she called into her comm link, still trying to blink away starbursts.

Garrus came on the line. "Still here, Shepard. What the hell was that?"

"Ash?" she asked.

"Still coming around." A pause. "Her armor's pretty banged up, but she doesn't seem badly hurt."

Another voice joined them. It was Wrex. He was laughing. Shepard shook her head.

"Commander, come in." Joker sounded frantic.

Her vision started to clear. She was hanging off the side of the _Fedele_. The hatch, about three meters from her position, was wide open. "This is Shepard. The hatch was rigged with some kind of explosive device. We're ok."

"The airlock sensors got knocked offline. I'm trying to get them back."

Pieces of the docking tube were drifting all around them. Shepard licked her lips. "That might take awhile."

"Ma'am?"

The _Normandy _was receding from their position. She frowned. Any blast large enough to impart appreciable acceleration to something with the mass of her ship would have been fully sufficient to leave her boarding team a pile of red paste. The _Fedele _was on the move. And with their docking equipment destroyed, extraction became a lengthy process.

"The tube's gone," she reported tersely, making a quick decision. "We proceed as planned. Once the ship is under our control, we'll re-establish docking."

"Roger that." _Normandy's _intrasystem drive flared, putting more maneuvering room between it and the _Fedele_. "Good luck, Commander. Joker out."

Shepard picked her way towards the hatch and set her magboots down inside. Garrus passed her Chief Williams, who stumbled as her feet met the floor. She peered at her face through the half-blackened mask. "How you doing, Chief?"

Williams got off a half-assed salute. "In one piece, ma'am."

"You can sit tight at the door. I doubt anyone will bother you."

"No ma'am," she said, a touch unsteadily. "I'll walk it off. Just a little dizzy."

Nothing about her posture suggested broken bones or internal injuries, and there wasn't any blood or bruising visible on her face to indicate getting bashed against the inside of her helmet. Shepard checked her suit biometrics just to be sure. "Alright. Hang back and guard our rear. Your armor's shot to hell."

"Aye aye, ma'am."

Wrex and Garrus landed behind her, weapons drawn. The turian glanced her way. "We're going ahead with the plan?"

"You better believe it." There was real anger in her voice. "This bitch didn't want my attention, but she sure as hell has it now."

"She's willing to damage her own ship to slow you down," Wrex commented, casually, as if he were speaking of the weather. "This won't be the last trap."

Garrus made a sound of agreement, but added, "The inner hatch will be clean. If that door goes, the whole ship vents to space."

"So how are we supposed to get it open?" Williams asked. "Without the outer hatch there's no way to seal the airlock."

Shepard was studying the controls inside the airlock. "Turian ship. You served in the Hierarchy navy, Garrus- does this thing have an emergency shutter like the _Normandy_?"

He looked over her shoulder. "It should. Try that switch. But Shepard, if we close it, we're not getting back out this way."

"We never were," Shepard said, and activated the shutter. It slammed across the opening on the outer hull, sealing them into the airlock. It was the final safeguard against depressurization. They would need to override the controls from the ship's life support center- a lengthy and tedious process not likely to happen with Nassana's people after them.

It left them in complete darkness. Shepard fumbled her way to the inner hatch and turned the manual lock. Garrus was probably right. Rigging the inner hatch to blow would be stupidly risky. But Ash's armor was wrecked and it was a small wonder of fate that her body hadn't followed. It was a reality of command that sometimes her orders hurt her people. Sometimes she even knew it would happen when she gave them. But Shepard _hated _it when one of them took a shot meant for her.

Ten minutes ago, this was about unethical mercenaries and rogue scientists. Nassana just had to go and make it personal.

The airlock completed pressurization, and the hatch swung inward on the cargo bay. Shepard advanced into the hold, rifle raised. Her squad crowded behind her.

There were crates jamming the way in all directions. Only a single narrow path led inward from the airlock, barely wide enough for them to walk two abreast, and dimly illuminated by Shepard's gun-mounted flashlight. It also lit the labels on the boxes and shipping containers.

Wrex grunted, somewhere between admiration and surprise. "There's enough ordinance in here to take out half a colony."

"Lab equipment, too." Shepard shone her light on a foam-guarded wooden skeleton holding a plastic-wrapped glovebox in place for shipping. "Looks new. He must have has some accounts C-Sec didn't freeze."

Garrus kept his rifle level. "Dahlia clearly runs a more diversified business than simple guns-for-hire."

"The explosives could be the doctor's," Shepard speculated, not believing it. She took another step, felt resistance, and froze instantaneously. "Wait-"

She spoke too slowly. The turian beside her pulled his boot across the tripwire.

Shepard tried to shove them both out of the way, but her reaction speed couldn't top that of the trigger. The side of the nearest crate exploded towards them, showering the human and turian in something warm and wet. They were thrown roughly across the narrow path; Garrus' elbow wound up in her stomach, knocking the wind out of her. He stumbled and slipped.

Shepard's blood was still racing with adrenaline in anticipation of a grenade blast, or a flamethrower, or something of considerable violence. Yet all their blunder yielded was a coating of sticky red. Bits of wood and other refuse clung to it. Lab supplies- test tubes, waste pans, wash bottles- lay scattered about their ankles.

She scraped the muck off her faceplate. "I'm really starting to hate this place."

Garrus stirred next to her, sitting up. A petri dish slid off his head. "What happened?"

"Trip wire rigged to some kind of fluid dispenser." Shepard hauled him to his feet. "It came from one of the doctor's crates. Hell only knows what this crap is made from, but it doesn't seem to be harmful to the suit."

"I don't get it," Williams said, looking over the remains of the explosion. "Why not rig it to some real damage? They're not hurting for supplies."

"There's enough munitions in here to break the ship in half if a fire got out of control." Shepard shook her head at the sheer idiocy of the situation. "I'm surprised at her caution, though, after the way she blew that hatch. I guess she has some sanity after all."

Wrex picked through the wreckage, searching for the source of the ignition. "So if Saren boarded the _Normandy_, you'd let him have it?"

"That's different. My ship has cutting-edge technology and is a key asset to winning this war." The words came perhaps a touch too quickly.

"Sure," Wrex said, not buying it. He held up the remains of the explosive, still attached to the wire. "This Dahlia reminds me a little of a commando I used to know. Aveena. Heh. Haven't thought about her in a long time."

No amount of wiping would remove the red goop. Shepard settled for removing most of the debris stuck to it. Williams was trying not to snicker. "Better make sure to get an extra-careful decontam after extraction, ma'am."

Garrus was having a similar problem cleaning up. "I think it's some kind of nutrient bath. That bastard had vats of it back on the Citadel for growing tissue. Stinks to high heaven."

Shepard started forward again, at a much slower pace, watching the ground with a hawk eye. "You were trying to tell me a story, back in the airlock, about Saren."

The krogan snorted. "Yeah. That. Not much to tell. Not even sure why I brought it up."

"We've got a few minutes." The direct route to the elevator was blocked off by Dahlia's stores. It would take some time to wind back around. And if the mercenaries could break the Alliance encryptions on their helmet-to-helmet frequency, they had bigger problems than being overheard.

"It was a few years ago, out in the Terminus. I heard about a job. Good pay, but they said the best part was the boss was never around. Easy credits."

That gave her pause. "I didn't realize Saren was openly recruiting mercs."

"It wasn't that open. I didn't even know his name when I was hired. And I only saw his face once." Wrex shuddered. "I'll never forget it."

"He's an ugly son-of-a-bitch, it's true," Shepard remarked lightly, peering around a corner. Williams giggled behind her.

"I'm not joking around, Shepard." Wrex's voice was a low growl. "We captured a huge heavy-hauler, killed the crew, and were, uh, taking inventory when he came aboard. Some of the other mercs called him by name, but he just kept moving through the ship. Watching. Cold. Never spoke a word."

Garrus, true to his C-Sec roots, spotted the inconsistency. "You said he was hands-off. What made this freighter special?"

"No idea. There's more war gear on this sorry boat than I ever saw on that run. I got a real bad feeling when I saw him watching us like that, nothing of value aboard, and I got the hell out. I didn't even wait around to get paid."

Shepard had difficulty picturing it, with what she knew of Wrex. "You bailed because the boss wasn't friendly?"

"I've only felt like that once before in my life, on the way to a Crush where my father tried to kill me. You better believe I trust it. Taking a walk saved my life. Every one of the mercs I worked with on that run ended up dead within the week. Every damn one."

It made a horrible kind of sense, and confirmed Shepard's suspicions that Saren planned this betrayal for years. No government in the galaxy tendered a fondness for mercenaries. Even within their territories, the sudden disappearance of an independent team, unaffiliated with any of the major players, would go uninvestigated. Out in the Terminus there was no chance. The only question left was what was in the hold of that freighter that Saren wanted with such urgency and secrecy. That was a thought to keep her up at night.

Her light shone on a thin gunmetal gray wire strand. "Got another one."

She knelt and traced it back to its trigger. Shepard blinked twice.

Garrus squeezed in to take a look. "I'll be damned."

"What?" Williams asked.

Shepard tensed the wire a bit, double-checking her assumption. An invisible stream of gas blew dust off the floor. "It's tied to a homemade flamethrower. What were we assuming about Dahlia's sensibility, again?"

"Who the hell puts a flamethrower in the middle of an ordinance stockpile?"

"My point exactly." She straightened. "Mind your step."

Garrus had gone on ahead. His flashlight ran over several lines of salarian script, labeling a stack of boxes. "I might have something here."

Shepard scanned the words. "'Warning: Live Animal Transport'? What the hell?"

Williams coughed. "It gets worse, ma'am. This box is torn open. Some of the contents are missing."

Shepard followed her voice with her flashlight, her brow furrowed. The chief continued her careful search, laying a pool of light across the metal floor plates of the cargo bay. She jumped as a skittering noise came from the depths of the hold, her flashlight flicking towards the sound. "What was that?"

"Easy there, Chief." Shepard, too, swung her light around to get a better look. "Probably just rats. This place isn't exactly spic-and-span."

Garrus located the inventory stapled to the side of the crate and began to flip through it. "Salarians typically use newts as surrogates for scientific testing."

"Rats, newts, whatever." Williams swallowed. "Why does it have to be damned rats?"

Wrex found that funny. "Those tiny furry vermin frighten you human soldiers? Your Alliance needs some shaping up, Shepard."

"I just don't like rats, ok?" The chief shuddered. "My sister Abby used to keep pet mice. One of them had babies, and they escaped their cage. We were finding mice and parts of mice, in closets, in our shoes, even in the jar of flour, until our father got a new posting."

The skittering came again, closer this time. Her breath was loud over the transmitter. "Can we focus on getting to the CIC? Please?"

"Alright, Ash. Alright." Shepard privately shared Wrex's amusement, though she was too polite to let on. She turned back towards the path. "Move out."

A small form leapt out of the darkness, flinging itself at her chest. She slapped it out of the air on pure reflex. It hit a crate with a meaty thump. As Shepard knelt to examine it, another struck her shoulder. It clung to her armor webbing with disturbing tenacity, ripping several of the fibers with its miniature claws as she tore it loose.

Shepard stared at it. It was bulbous, blue in color with yellow striping and overlarge dark eyes. The creature struggled in her hand, all six of its legs flailing wildly. The smooth dampness of its skin made it difficult to hold.

Garrus let out a startled cry. One of the critters now clung to his knee. He tried to pry it off without much success. "Is this some kind of bad joke?"

The sounds of the fat blue newts scampering through the darkness of the cargo hold were now constant, and growing louder. Shepard glanced down at her fluid-soaked suit. _It stinks to high heaven._ "Oh, shit-"

The newts sprang from the floor in heavy waves, pelting Garrus and the commander, too many to count. They hung off her arms, her legs, her waist, the tubes connecting her helmet to the air purification unit on her back, slowing her down. She whirled, cursing, trying to stymie those still finding purchase, trying to fling off those attached, stomping on them all indiscriminately with her feet.

Garrus performed a similar dance, yelling and knocking into containers. Williams dropped her flashlight and was crowded so far back that she was almost lost to the dark. Wrex attempted twice to raise his shotgun to the onslaught, but was so doubled over with roaring laughter that it rendered aim impossible.

The floor was slick with blue blood. Shepard slipped and fell hard on her ass. The newts crawled onto her face mask, scraping at it with their feet, licking up the red goop wherever they could with glee. She watched their barbed purple tongues lap over the plastic, and lay back with a groan. "Fuck it. I give up."

Wrex finally composed himself sufficiently to fire a blast. It narrowly avoided Garrus' feet. "Hey! Watch it!"

The krogan fired a second shot. The spooked newts fled. A third blast secured the exodus. Shepard sat up, pulling off the remaining stragglers. She spared a glance for Chief Williams, who had her eyes closed, shaking quietly.

"I don't get it," Garrus was saying. "What was the point? It's not like they could do any damage."

"Breather helmets," Shepard said, expelling a breath. "They've managed to tear through my carbon fiber webbing in places. If they'd gotten to skin, we'd both have chunks missing."

"Maybe you. Turian hide is tough." He grinned.

The commander got to her feet and dusted herself off as best she could. Over the past few months her armor had taken an enormous beating, but she never thought its last stand might be against a pack of vicious amphibians. Small pits were forming in the ceramic plates where their blood and saliva touched it. Her face plate was almost certainly ruined, though she could still see out of it well enough to navigate. She couldn't imagine what it might have done to flesh. "How are we doing? Chief?"

Williams drew a shaky breath. She was green as she glanced at the critter carnage. "I'll be ok."

"You sure?" Vomiting in a helmet was a dicey proposition. It could clog airlines and easily suffocate its user.

"Yes, ma'am." She clung to her rifle with determination.

They ran across a few more traps and scavenged gear. Dahlia clearly maximized her two hours' warning. What was troubling Shepard, however, was the utter lack of personnel. The cargo bay was a bad place to throw down, but it took more than fighters to fly a ship. The _Fedele's _skipper didn't strike the commander as the kind of woman to pull her people back for protection. The whole deck was pitch black, from bow to stern. Someone cut the emergency lighting in violation of Systems Alliance safety regulations for ships operating in their territory.

The hoard of crates thinned as they neared the elevator. The _Fedele _was larger than the _Normandy_, and her design schematics showed the elevator visiting all three decks. Engineering and life support, however, were still located in a pocket behind the shaft, next to the drive core. The hatch on each side was welded shut, dousing any hope of leveraging control of those critical systems against Dahlia.

Shepard was about to leave it be, when Chief Williams said, "Did anyone else hear that?"

"Hear what?" Garrus asked. Wrex moved towards the hatch, eyeing it suspiciously.

There was a bang from the engineering room. Shepard grimaced. "That didn't sound like machinery."

"Told you there was nothing wrong with my ears, ma'am." Williams was smug.

Shepard banged her gloved hand on the door, sharply, three times. The answer came almost immediately, a frantic pounding on the opposite side.

"Fuck," Shepard said, to no one in particular.

Williams rapped back with her fist, matching their rhythm. "They locked their own people in, ma'am. Why would anyone do that?"

"Why?" Shepard sighed. "Because cutting yourself off from life support is a bad idea, particularly when you've rigged your cargo bay with all kinds of traps. And because if they were given an order to, say, destabilize the drive core, there's absolutely nothing we could do about it."

Williams gave her a long look. "I don't know whether to be impressed or scared that your mind worked it out that fast."

Garrus eyed the hatch. "They don't sound like they're waiting for orders."

Shepard brought up her suit diagnostics on her omni-tool, checking the air sampling. Wrex shook his head. "Bad idea. Best thing would be to put a few rounds through the door, but if you don't like that, at least deal with them later."

"How can you even think of that?" Williams was disgusted. "Those people are trapped. They need help."

"Stand down, Chief. Wrex is right. It's a risk leaving them behind us given where they're trapped." Shepard started to undo the neck seal on her helmet. "That's why I want to talk to them first."

The cargo bay's air might be clean, but it positively reeked of nutrient gel and newt blood, harsh and primal odors that left her coughing. She approached the door and raised her voice. "Can you hear me?"

There was some scuffling, and an asari voice answered, "Yes."

A half-second later, Shepard's translation protocol rendered it in English. Apparently the muffling of the door was messing with its reception. She flicked it off. The crewman was speaking Thessian asari, the textbook dialect, and it was less annoying than listening to lag. "Is everyone alright in there? How many are you?"

"We're fine. Our indicators are good." There was a pause, and the sound of more movement. "I'm the Chief Engineer and my three assistants are here as well. Dahlia's lost her mind. She thinks C-Sec is coming for her ship. We're not even in Council space!"

It was true; the Traverse was a gray area, legally-speaking. "I'm a spectre operating on information that your captain is transporting a dangerous criminal. I'm here for the doctor, nothing else."

A small lie- after Dahlia chose violence against her squad, there was no going back- but she didn't need a second ship. She hadn't given much thought to what would happen to the _Fedele _after seizing control.

A longer pause. "We don't want any trouble with a spectre. We're just engineers. We didn't sign on for this!"

Shepard contemplated her options. The asari sounded sincere, and frightened. Her story made sense. "I don't have time open this hatch right now, but if you sit tight and keep everything running smoothly, I can promise I'll come back, and nobody on your team will be harmed. Agreed?"

"Agreed," the answer came swiftly, with overtones of relief. Apparently, the engineer did not favor her captain's odds against Shepard, either. "That salarian is a nasty piece of work. And Dahlia's got her mercs eating out of her hand. They'll die to protect her."

"Well, that's their choice. Stay calm- it won't be much longer." Shepard stepped back, and replaced her helmet. "We need to find Dahlia and Saleon."

Garrus looked back towards the elevator. "She's probably in the CIC. Saleon could be anywhere."

"We take out Dahlia first." They piled into the elevator, and Shepard hit the button for Deck 1.

It rose smoothly for the first several seconds before shuddering to a stop. The lights in the carriage went out. Shepard's hand slapped against the black composite of her helmet's forehead. "True or false. If I had someone back on the _Normandy _crawl out a hatch and look through a port on this ship, I'd be better informed of what's going on than I am right now."

Garrus flicked on his light and opened the control panel. "The board's dead."

Shepard looked up. The elevator had a maintenance access hatch. "Only one way up, then."

She blew the lock off with her pistol and reached up to flip open the trapdoor. There were moments when being awkwardly tall presented its advantages. She started to squirm her way through.

Wrex gave her a leg up. "There's no way I'm fitting through that hatch, Shepard."

"We'll figure out how to get it moving again once we're in the shaft." She pulled herself the rest of the way with a grunt. "There's got to be some kind of emergency override."

From the roof of the carriage Shepard could see slender lines of light outlining the hatch leading to Deck 2. It was within reach. Leveraging it open, however, was a different matter.

She reached down to haul Garrus out of the carriage, quickly followed by Williams. Wrex scowled up at them. "I haven't got all day."

"And if you don't give us at least five minutes to look around, you may be there more than one," she shot back. She started scanning the roof for any kind of electrical switch. Garrus and Williams checked the cabling and guide rails.

After about a minute of this, without warning, the carriage lurched. The oiled cables began to slide smoothly as service resumed. Garrus stared. "No."

"Shirt, shit, shit!" Shepard rushed towards the hatch. "Help me!"

Williams responded to the order with the speed of bone-deep conditioning. The two women pulled at the doors. Garrus was dumbfounded. "She can't crush us. There's clearance past the upper elevator hard stops."

"Yeah, but she sure as fuck can park it there and leave us until we starve." Shepard strained against the hatch, her boots scrabbling for purchase. "There's no way out through the floor!"

Garrus joined Williams. Beneath them, Shepard heard Wrex grunting as he prised open the inner hatch. As the carriage neared the second deck, leverage got easier. When the elevator carriage was a quarter of the way up the door, it finally gave way.

"Go!" Shepard shouted. They squirmed through the aperture. As it rose, Wrex's head and shoulders appeared, his shotgun level in his hands. He made a dive towards the deck. The other three just barely cleared the floor before he landed, heavily, knocking the wind out of himself. The elevator lumbered past without them.

They all lay there a moment, sprawled in the _Fedele's _mess, breathing deeply.

At last, Shepard stood and brushed the dust off her armor as best she could. "When this cruise is over, I'm definitely lodging a complaint with the management."

Wrex offered her that unnerving grin of his. "This is the most fun I've had on a boat in a long time. I just wish the other guests would join us."

"You know, I don't usually take any pleasure in killing," Shepard said. "But this one I'm going to savor."

"Liar." Wrex's grin grew wider. "You like it."

"I enjoy being great at what I do. That's distinct from enjoying taking life."

"Whatever you say, Shepard."

"Ma'am," Williams interrupted, drawing her attention further down the deck. "We have a situation."

She pointed with her rifle. A half-dozen anxious faces of various species were pressed against the glass window of the med bay. None of them looked to be in good health, but there were no visible injuries. The hatch was deactivated, but not welded shut as with engineering on Deck 3. As Shepard approached, one of the patients, human, pressed a button for the intercom. "Who are you?"

She hoped to hell he was keeping the transmission limited to this deck. She opened up an additional port on her comm to interface with the system. "Commander Shepard, with the Systems Alliance. I'm going to take a wild guess that you came aboard with Dr. Saleon?"

The group nodded, almost as one. "He said C-Sec was sending a spectre."

"I'm that, too. We're going to get you out of here." Shepard stowed her rifle and peered into the room.

Garrus came up beside her. "Lucas. I remember you from my investigation."

"Detective Vakarian." He sounded shocked, but also relieved. "How did you get here?"

"The Commander keeps strange company." Garrus looked them over. "Is everyone ok in there?"

He nodded. Shepard finished her inspection. "Looks secure. Let's get this hatch working-"

"No!" The response was immediate, in several different languages, as the patients surged towards the window.

Shepard paused in her step. "What don't we know?"

Lucas pressed the comm button. "That bastard left us in here for a reason. He rigged the door with some kind of infective agent. I think he was hoping you would open it without thinking, or waste time trying to disarm it."

"This is movie villain crap," Shepard complained.

Garrus shrugged. "It's Saleon's style."

She glanced at him. "You believe this is legit?"

"Let's just say I don't think we can afford to guess wrong."

Moving to the far end of the window to improve her angle on the interior of the hatch didn't reveal any new information. If Saleon left a trap, it was wedged between the panels. "Forget the door. Can we break the windows?"

She was interrupted by a burst of comm static and a cough from Joker. "Commander, this is _Normandy_, come in."

"Shepard. What's wrong?" She took a few steps away from med bay, turning her back on the windows.

"We figured out where your crazy asari skipper is taking the _Fedele_."

"The suspense is killing me."

"Dahlia destabilized the orbit."

There was no possible way she heard that right. That was insane, even by her standards. "Say again, _Normandy_?"

"The _Fedele _is going down, in about four hours. But the really bad news is in another twenty minutes or so, the trajectory will be irreversible given the ship's maximum sustained thrust."

Shepard's gut twisted into a knot. "What's our extraction window?"

"Maybe an hour? I'm good, but you'll be putting the ship at risk."

"Roger that. Planned rendezvous is ETA sixty minutes. One way or another, we'll be there." She blew out a breath. "Shepard out."

A roomful of people were staring at her. Her hands clasped behind her back as her gaze shifted from one face to another. "Our timeline just got a little crunched. Nothing we can't handle, but we need move now. Dahlia's almost certainly in the CIC. Does anyone know where Saleon is hiding?"

The patients shook their heads. One offered, "Last we saw, he went upstairs on the elevator."

"Alright. So they're likely together." She looked at Garrus. "Next problem. The elevator is out of commission. How do we get to the upper deck?"

His mandibles clacked briefly, a gesture Shepard thought of as the turian equivalent to licking one's lips. "I'm not sure. Ventilation, maybe."

Wrex snorted in irritation. "Your puny ventilation shafts can't handle all this."

He gestured to himself. Shepard tried not to roll her eyes. Before she could say anything, there was a whimper from the mess. Her gun was in her hand with barely half a thought. "Cover me."

Her squad moved into position wordlessly. The sound came from a countertop island at the far end of the mess. _Fedele _was large enough to rate a full kitchen. She advanced steadily. Nothing was visible over the top of the counter. She swung around the side.

"Nooooo!" The screech was high and grating on the ears. There was a flurry of motion in a knee-hole pocket as the owner of the screech scrabbled for nonexistent cover. "Stop! I hurt nobody!"

"What in the hell?" Shepard snapped on her flashlight.

The creature cowered beneath the island. Its beady yellow eyes stared up at her, gleaming almost as brightly as its pointed, razor-sharp teeth. It shied back from the light.

"Pleeeease!" it said.

Shepard lowered her rifle a fraction. "It's a vorcha."

Lucas piped up. "That's just Krail. He's the cook."

"You let a vorcha cook your food?" she asked in disbelief. Vorcha were known to be dirty, nasty, and violent.

"Yes, yes, I cook." Krail nodded emphatically. The sallow cords of his skin seemed a touch pale in her flashlight beam.

Wrex took his incredulity a step farther. "You let one of these pyjacks on your ship?"

Lucas pressed his palms against the window. "Dahlia found him when he was young. Krail's alright. Let him be."

Shepard gave that information due consideration. "So you're… what, Dahlia's foster child?"

"Dahlia good, yes." He nodded some more. "Dahlia find me, on Omega."

_Dahlia left you on this deck to die, _Shepard thought, lips pursed. Aloud, she kept her voice calm, even friendly, moving her rifle away. "I apologize. I didn't know."

Krail peered up at her uncertainly. His beady eyes shifted from the commander to each of her team in turn.

"The ship's in trouble," Shepard went on. It was a version of the truth. Everything was far from right, anyway. "I'm here to help, but I can't find Dahlia."

"Dahlia upstairs," he hissed. "You leave Krail alone!"

She glanced aft. "Elevator's broken. Is there another way up?"

He sucked in a breath. Shepard knelt down to his level, and applied a little pressure. "It's very important I find her quickly. The ship is going to crash into a planet."

Her earnest blue eyes never wavered as he narrowed his gaze. "I help you find Dahlia, you help ship? You no hurt Krail?"

"You have my word," Shepard promised, holding out her hand.

He allowed her to help him out from under the counter. He wrinkled his nose. "Battery."

Krail started walking towards the bow. Shepard and her team followed. "What's in the battery?"

"Maintenance shaft." Even calm, the vorcha's voice was like a tortured violin. It set her teeth on edge. "Goes straight to bridge. I show you."

Williams coughed. "There's a shaft in the _Normandy _that runs from the battery to the bridge. I didn't remember until just now."

Shepard raised an eyebrow. Chief Williams was blushing behind her mask. "Something you want to share, Ash?"

"No, ma'am." She held herself at attention.

Shepard had been in the navy a lot longer than she'd had private quarters aboard ship. She was familiar with the potential uses of hidden spaces and decided not to press the issue. "It's worth checking out."

The vorcha pointed at the ceiling as they piled into the battery. What expense Dahlia spared on routine maintenance had been lavished on the replacement artillery. The _Fedele's _main cannon was state-of-the-art. It had also obviously seen use, from the scarring tracing the sides where it slid along its rails.

The hatch was locked, by an internal mechanism betrayed only by a keyhole, protecting it from most forced entry techniques. Shepard suppressed a sigh. "I don't know, Krail. It looks locked up tight."

His grubby hand reached under his torn shirt. "Krail has key. Dahlia send Krail into dirty places where asari no like to go."

He climbed up on the back of the gun and reached up towards the hatch, balanced precariously between the barrels. Then he swung up into the shaft with the agility of a monkey and disappeared.

Shepard followed as swiftly as she could, making a grab for his ankle, but he was too quick. There was no help for it. She could only try to minimize Dahlia's forewarning.

Her head emerged beside the co-pilot couch. A turian woman was slumped over the controls, quite clearly dead. The pilot's couch was vacant. It was a simple situation to read- the co-pilot clearly refused the order to crash the ship, and paid for it dearly. What a waste. Shepard shook her head, and hauled herself up onto the deck as quietly as she could.

Krail was already teetering towards the CIC. "Dahlia!"

Shepard reached back and pulled Garrus through, followed by Williams. Wrex was in a spot of trouble. His hump kept catching on the pipes lining the shaft. He waved them forward.

Shepard pointed aft and began to creep towards Dahlia's probable location, past the main airlock, taking some scant cover from the crew couches lining the walls of the deck.

The mercenaries assembled at the heart of the ship were mostly asari, with a few turians for spice. Dahlia stood out. Her solid build and evident ferocity commanded attention. A serviceable shotgun sat in her hands as she paced. Her people milled about the deck, uneasy, waiting.

Krail's bare feet slapped against the metal of the deck. He waved his arm. "Dahlia!"

"What is it?" Dahlia snapped, turning towards her name.

Shepard sighted on the woman's forehead.

"People here to fix ship!" Krial pointed back towards the bridge.

Dahlia's eyes snapped down the length of the CIC, her gun following a fraction of a second behind. They focused like a laser on Shepard's rifle peeking over the armrest of a couch. The asari let loose a blast without bothering to shoo the vorcha out of the way.

He screeched and dove for cover, trailing blood from his leg. Shepard managed to return fire before being forced to a new position, but the shots went wide.

"Kill them all," Dahlia snarled, more frost than fury. Her band fired as one.

It was one of those dirty, desperate fights that seemed to stretch on forever. A basic couch with metal frame and synthetic padding did little to stop bullets, and there was nowhere else to hide. Shepard was trying to aim between moments of keeping out of sight, but all she had were brief impressions before she was forced to either fire or sacrifice the shot. She knew some of them hit, though less than she'd like.

Across the way, Garrus and Williams were also struggling. Williams' armor was so busted up she was almost lying on the floor under the couches to avoid enemy fire, though she still managed to lay down a covering barrage with her assault rifle, sweeping out the area around the mercs' ankles. Garrus was trying to guard her while returning fire of his own. He was a good shot, one of the best Shepard had met, but skill only counted for so much a situation like this. Between the three of them, they kept the mercs from advancing, only just.

Every time Shepard gave back an inch of ground for additional cover she could sense the tide turning against them. "We could really use a hand right now!"

"How about a head?" came Wrex's voice behind her. He pumped his shotgun and hunched his shoulders

She scarcely had time to turn before the krogan let out a yell and barreled towards the very surprised mercenaries. He knocked one of the asari flat on her back and shot another in one smooth motion. It gave them the breathing room they needed to press forward.

"I have got to learn how to do that," Shepard muttered to herself, as she put down one of the turians.

With all of her fighters dead or injured past any state of combat readiness, Dahlia alone was left standing in the middle of her CIC, attempting to force her cooling shotgun to fire as Wrex knocked it from her hands. She kicked at his abdomen. The heavy krogan didn't even rock back. She used the force of the blow to give her a head start running towards the elevator shaft, her whole form limbed in blue light as she approached the gaping hatch.

Shepard raised her run and sighted. "Oh no you don't."

Dahlia's leg went out from under her just as she tensed to leap, presumably to drift gently down to Deck 3 under the influence of her biotics. Instead, she ended up face-first on the floor.

Shepard stepped over the bodies, her gun never wavering. Dahlia attempted a biotic attack, but the hurled sphere of dark energy went wide. She cursed her in asari. "Why?"

"Why not?" Shepard placed the muzzle of her gun against the asari's forehead. The woman's lip curled back. Shepard continued as if nothing had happened. "You're transporting a known criminal and I work for the Citadel in addition to the Alliance whose space you are violating. Even if that were not the case, you've got enough illicit ordinance in your cargo bay to justify my actions."

"Since when do spectres care whether their decisions are warranted?" Her eyes blazed up at Shepard, unapologetic and filled with rage and loathing.

"I think most of us care, but justification is a matter of perspective, after all." She paused. "I suppose it's not worth asking if you'll cooperate."

Dahlia spat at her. Shepard sighed. "Where's your pilot?"

"Dead." A laugh, derisive. "You shot her. And now we die. We are all prisoners of gravity, whether we like it or not."

"You needn't remind me of the power of nature. I almost kicked it in a volcano some weeks ago. But I have no intention of dying on this ship." Shepard pulled the trigger back, just enough that a twitch would send it over the edge. "How do I stabilize the orbit?"

"Fuck you," Dahlia said, and banged her head against the gun. It was unexpected, and it was enough. The rifle, tensed and ready, jarred in her hands and released a bullet into the asari's skull. She fell back, staring blankly at the bulkhead.

The gun dangled from her hand, tiredly. Shepard pinched the bridge of her nose and let out a long breath.

Williams looked around the now quiet CIC. "This could have ended better."

"It ended pretty much how I expected it would." Shepard glanced at the bodies. "There are no salarians here."

There was a piercing wail from the fore of the ship. Her brow furrowed. From under one of the bullet-riddled couches crawled the vorcha Krail, limping, and caterwauling like the world was coming to an end.

He stumbled over, trailing blood, and threw himself on Dahlia. "You kill her!"

Shepard honestly couldn't think of what to say. "She shot you. You were standing between her and us, and she didn't care. I'm sorry."

"You kill her!" he cried again, rocking back and forth.

Garrus point out, "Technically, she shot herself. Shepard was only holding the gun."

Krail continued hugging the body and making pitiful little sounds. It was both absurd and terrible. The commander turned away.

"He's an enemy combatant," Wrex stated.

"Do you want to shoot him?"

Wrex scowled. "Waste of ammo."

"Then I don't want to hear about it." She turned to Garrus. "What's left? Where is the doctor?"

"Comm room. We've looked everywhere else." His stare hardened as he looked aft, past the elevator.

"We move in quick and quiet," Shepard said, checking her weapon. "Restrain the doctor, break the windows in med bay, free the engineers, and get the hell out of here."

Garrus grabbed her arm. "Wait, restrain?"

"We've had this conversation, Detective Vakarian," she said sharply. "On my crew we don't take the law into our own hands. We're not going to execute him."

His grip tightened. "He'll get away again. You have no idea how sneaky this bastard is. Trust me."

"Not if I have anything to say about it." Shepard offered him a grim smile. "He's not going anywhere."

Garrus scowled, but held his peace. Shepard glanced at the remainder of her team. "Chief, get to the bridge and see if Joker can talk you through reengaging the autopilot. Wrex, secure the CIC. I don't want any more surprises."

They moved into position. Shepard and Garrus approached the comm room alone, and in silence. But as they tagged open the hatch, they realized they failed to catch the doctor by surprise.

The olive-skinned salarian was dressed in a spotless lab coat and freshly-shined shoes. He turned smoothly to face them, his hands clasped behind his back, the picture of calm. His nostrils flared as he sucked in a breath.

"Dr. Saleon?" Shepard asked.

His mouth twitched, looking her up and down. "Commander Shepard, I presume?

She glanced at her blue-and-red stained hardsuit, with all kinds of dust and refuse clinging to the congealing liquids. "I'm not having the best day."

His gaze shifted. "And Detective Vakarian."

Shepard's eyes flicked to Garrus, briefly. "You're sure it's him?"

"Positive." His expression settled into a hard, angry sneer as he regarded the doctor. "You won't escape this time. I'd harvest your organs first but we don't have that kind of time."

"I don't know what he's told you about me, Commander, but I promise you I am a legitimate scientist, with a perfectly legal practice." He spoke crisply, affronted. "And since you've seen fit to murder my escort, I'll have to demand you take me the rest of the way to my new facility."

Shepard laughed. "Not a chance. Your guilt or innocence is for C-Sec to decide. We're taking you back to the Citadel."

"But we have him!" Garrus protested, gesturing with his gun. There was a desperate edge to his voice.

"No. If he dies, we'll never know everything that happened." Shepard stood her ground. "We'll take him back to the Citadel, interrogate him, and he'll serve his time. That's my final word."

"Ah." The salarian cleared his throat. "I was afraid it might come to this."

He drew his arm out from behind his back and raised his hand to the light. In his grasp sparkled a slim glass vial. "I've taken precautions, you see."

"Yes, your little trap back on Deck 2." Garrus was dismissive. "We didn't trigger it."

"That's where you're wrong." Saleon allowed himself a hint of a smile. "The med bay is seals off hermetically from the rest of the ship, to contain contaminants. I've been circulating my specially engineered virus through its ducts since Commander Shepard threatened this vessel over the comm. I expect by now it's incubating quite merrily within my loyal staff."

Every muscle in Garrus' neck was tensed with the urge to fly at him. "You bastard."

"That test tube holds the antidote?" Shepard hazarded, more pragmatically.

"Quite. I apologize for these barbaric tactics, Spectre, but turians can be so rash." His tongue clicked regretfully. "I wanted to be sure you and I had time to negotiate."

"You know Garrus wanted to shoot down your ship when you fled, hostages or no. It was C-Sec who let you live."

"Really? I'm surprised. Nonetheless, here we are."

"What is it you want?"

"Safe passage and a promise to be left in peace." Saleon was frank. "My work is important. I'm sure you can appreciate sometimes science must occur outside the boundaries of over-restrictive laws, just as your own work sometimes crosses legal lines."

Shepard gave a derisive snort. "Organ harvests are bush-league. Nothing cutting edge there."

"Yet the process frequently produces higher-quality tissue than other methods, and more quickly. The recipients are healthy, most of my staff is still alive and earning more money than they could have on their own."

"You exploit them."

"These are people who lack any individual skills or means. Most of them are grateful." He paused. "I'm willing to offer you a stake in my enterprise. You'd have full access to the facilities, a stake in the profits, and of course given your line of work you may find our services convenient at some point."

She studied him, her brain going into overdrive as she calculated all the ways the next twenty seconds might play out. Garrus mistook her silence for consideration. "Shepard, you can't seriously be thinking about taking his offer."

Her glance was very dry, refusing to dignify that with a response. Instead, she addressed the salarian. "Doctor, by the authority vested in me by the Citadel Council, I am taking you into custody to await investigation of your crimes by Citadel Security. Will you come quietly?"

His lips twisted into a snarl. With one hand, he made to hurl the fragile vial to the floor, while his other reached for the sidearm secured at his belt.

That was all the incentive Garrus needed. He sent three bullets between the salarian's eyes before the doctor got his hand around the grip. Shepard made a desperate dive and caught the vial in her gloved hand a fraction of a second before it struck the ground.

Her eyes closed briefly as she let out a breath of relief.

Garrus checked the doctor's pulse. "And so he dies anyway. What was the point of that?"

"I've learned something after all these years out here, at the fringes of civilization." She got to her feet, careful not to crush the antidote, and gave him a long-suffering smile. "You can't control how people will act, Garrus. You can only control how you respond. In the end, that's all that matters."

"Yeah?" He thought about it, slowly. "I don't think I've ever met anyone like you, Shepard."

"I'll take that as a compliment." She turned towards the hatch. "Let's wrap up and get the hell off this boat."

/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\

In the end, they were too late to save the _Fedele _from a fiery doom on the uninhabited planet Dahlia used as a way stop. However, they did manage to get everyone off the vessel in time. Chakwas detected strange antigens in the patients' blood work, proving Dr. Saleon's bad cliché of a plan was at least no bluff. She was synthesizing more of the antidote. _Normandy's _decontamination procedures managed to eliminate any trace of the virus on their suits and clothing before they came aboard.

They also located additional stockpiles of heavy munitions on the surface. Shepard wrote up their findings in a report to send Fifth Fleet Command, care of Admiral Hackett. If Dahlia had friends, the Alliance would soon know of it. After the logistics officer got a look at the damage, she added a requisition order for new hardsuits for herself and Chief Williams.

Chakwas didn't have enough beds. The most abused patients lay on the tables while the rest crowded on chairs and desks ringing med bay. Shepard folded her arms and stared through the windows.

Garrus joined her. "Pretty unbelievable, isn't it."

"You can say that twice." She shook her head. "I'm still not sure what I'm going to tell Nassana, but a lot of foul language and possibly a little brandishing of various weaponry might be involved."

"Not to put too fine a point on it, but we could use her credits. You did the job after all."

"Oh, she'll pay up. I know her dirty little secret now." Shepard gave him a smile. "What's on your mind?"

He was silent a long moment, watching Chakwas attend her charges. "Do you think we'll ever catch Saren?"

"Yes." There wasn't a scrap of doubt or hesitation in her response.

"That simple, huh?" He chuckled. It was an odd sound, the flanging of his mandibles giving it the undertones of almost a growl.

"If he wins, it's all over. I've seen the destruction. No fleet in this galaxy is ready to face a reaper invasion. We'll catch him because we have no other choice." Her head turned back to the med bay port, expression hardening. "And I don't fail."

"When you say it like that, I almost believe you."

A grin tugged at her mouth despite her best efforts to suppress it. "Almost? I need to work on my delivery."

He gestured towards the patients. "It feels like we spend a lot of time screwing around, some days. It's good work, but doesn't move us toward our goal."

"I've learned to never underestimate the power of serendipity." The commander shrugged. "And there's this. Most people, when they get angry, they lose focus, they start making bad choices, they can't see anything but the red veil. When I get angry, I get better. Sharper. Stronger. Always been that way."

He rubbed his face and snorted. "Dahlia really pissed you off something good."

"Yeah." She let that comment hang in the air without further comment. The asari's games, from both sisters, got under her skin more than she liked. There wasn't anything else to say.

"I know you're doing the best you can, and if anyone can pull this off, it's you." His arms moved behind his back as he assumed something resembling attention, a sign of greater respect than she'd seen from him to date. "I guess I just wanted to say, if there is anything else I can do to help, I'm here."

Shepard regarded Garrus quietly. "I need a police officer. I need someone who knows how to do this investigation crap better than I can. I need someone who can get in Saren's head and figure out where he's going. So what do you think? Are you ready to do your job again?"

He nodded. "Yes, Commander."

"Good. Get with Liara. See what you can make of her Prothean intel with what you know about Saren."

She watched him walk off towards the stairwell. This day kept getting stranger and stranger. Shepard rubbed her neck, closed her eyes a long moment, and headed back to her quarters to finish her report.

Dinner came and went before she was finished. The remains of the meal lay beside her terminal when she typed the last full stop. Editing out the snarking alone had taken more than forty minutes. And filing the official forms for Ash's injuries was both tedious and guilt-inducing. All her people were important and valuable to her, but Ash was special. As much as the borderline insubordination and the all-too-frank opinions made her want to beat her senseless some days, a part of her delighted in them. That kind of passion, commitment, and drive was a rarity regardless of skill or rank. It reminded Shepard of herself, a little, back when she was young and cocky and immortal.

She stared into space and wondered if that was how Anderson looked at her sometimes. Or if she'd have that same unshakeable solidity and horrifying world-weariness when she was forty-six.

Alright. Time to shut the terminal, clearly. She shook her head, laughing at herself a bit, and headed out to grab a glass of water and some downtime before bed.

She found Alenko hard at work scrubbing down the food prep area of the mess.

"KP duty?" she asked, eyebrows raised. "Seems a little below your pay grade."

Alenko shrugged and kept working the sponge. "Private Fredricks wasn't feeling well, so I told him to get some rack time. It's not like I've never needed someone to cover for me."

"Want some help?" It had been a long day. Some mindless labor before she tried for sleep had appeal.

He gestured to the soapy bucket. "Be my guest."

She found a second sponge and started cleaning out the machine that processed their pre-frozen, half-cooked meals. He glanced up at her. "Heard things got kind of interesting on the _Fedele_. Something about newts?"

"Trust me, you don't want to know. Suffice to say I'm going to keep a good distance and preferably a thick lead wall between me and any salarian laboratories from now on."

"Those patients were in rough shape. Chakwas said most of them are going to need ongoing treatment for months, if not years, to correct all the damage." There was a note of tempered anger in his voice. "Some of them looked pretty young. Teenagers."

Shepard scrubbed at a particularly stubborn sauce stain. "I can't say Saleon didn't meet a richly deserved fate."

"And I heard Chief Williams had a close call with some kind of explosive?"

"She's lucky to be alive. Dahlia rigged the hatch to kill anyone who opened it. Chakwas looked her over and pronounced her fit for duty." The reply was steady, uninflected, but there was no question the subject was closed. Watch was changing over to third shift. Crewmen were moving from the racks near the battery to the stairs and elevator, towards their posts, as they continued to clean the mess.

"So who was that, back on the Citadel?" Shepard asked after a bit, as much to change the subject as anything else.

"Who, Mat?" Alenko shrugged. "We went to college together. Dated off and on for awhile, until we realized it made us want to kill each other. He's an old friend."

"But still friends, huh." There was a certain amount of skepticism. It wasn't within Shepard's personal experience that a romantic entanglement could conclude in anything less than scorched earth warfare.

"Some relationships do end peacefully, you know," he chided her. "Not everyone crashes their ex's party and runs off with a stripper."

A corporal passing through the mess paused in his step a moment.

"What are you looking at?" Shepard demanded.

"N-nothing, ma'am." He ripped off a salute and scurried away.

"Damn straight." Shepard turned back to Alenko, smirking. "Alright, then. What _was_ your worst break-up, Staff Lieutenant?"

He slopped the sponge back into the bucket and wrung it out. "I don't want to talk about it."

"C'mon." She grinned, impishly. "You've heard mine, it's only fair."

"It's not a real break-up story. More like how I ruined my chances forever with a girl I really liked."

"You gotta know that only makes me want to hear it more."

"Maybe another time."

"I think you're just worried that you're not nearly as crazy as m-"

"That instructor I killed, back in brain camp? That was how." His voice was harsh. He wouldn't look at her. "Happy?"

She was taken aback, both by the pronouncement and the venom with which it was stated. "I guess he was a popular teacher?"

Alenko actually laughed at that, surprising her further. "Hell, no. He was a real bastard. Turian and never let you forget it. With those of us who were navy brats, he used to joke about killing our parents during the First Contact War, regardless of if it was true."

"Sounds like a real treat." Shepard gave him a frank look. "Do you want to start at the beginning or should I keep asking questions?"

He threw down the sponge with more than a touch of exasperation. "Nothing ever deters you, does it?"

"Not really, no. It's part of my charm." She gave him her very best facetious grin.

Alenko rolled his eyes, but started talking, slowly at first. "Her name was Rahna. She was in the Singapore group, same as me. I'd known her since I was nine years old. We grew up together. She was… smart as hell. Beautiful, but without the attitude. Sweet-tempered. Life in the program was hard for her. She didn't have the right disposition for it."

Shepard considered her response. He was so touchy that navigating any conversation on this topic felt as dark as _Fedele's _hold, sometimes. "Lamai mentioned a girl named Rahna, that she would be… disappointed in your career choices."

"She probably would. Rahna didn't have a violent bone in her body." He licked his lips, and kept washing the counter. "There was kind of a circle that grew up around her. She attracted friends, people who loved her. We tried to protect her from the worst of it. Things got really bad around the time we got the L2 implants."

"Because of the side effects?"

"Because they were running out of time. The oldest of us were sixteen then. Technically, once they'd registered us and compiled dossiers on our abilities, Conatix fulfilled the legal obligations of the act that created BAaT. They were only able to hold us at Jump Zero for years thanks to parental consent. Detaining us after we were eighteen would require another act of Parliament, and the climate towards biotics wasn't the same as back in 2160."

"That's why they censored your emails home." There was a small, sour coal of rage burning quietly in Shepard's stomach. "Conatix wanted a return on their investment."

"Exactly." He let out a breath. "So they hired special consultants. Commander Vyrnnus was one of them. These weren't teachers. They were freaking biotic mercenaries too old or volatile to keep working for the Hierarchy. They had one instruction only- find the limits of human biotics. More than a few kids snapped. Some died in training accidents. One committed suicide."

"Why the hell would Conatix hire people like that to train teenagers?"

"Hiring anyone sane or trained would have required Council involvement. We'd just signed the treaty allowing humanity an ambassador on the Citadel. They didn't want their program exposed to galactic scrutiny."

Shepard was beyond appalled. "That's cold. They'd worked with you for years- all but raised you."

"Our old instructors, maybe, but to the corporation we were never more than a commodity." He stared down at the counter. "Vyrnnus was the worst. He terrorized us, but her especially, because he saw her as a soft target. One day, we sat down to lunch and Rahna reached for a glass of water instead of pulling it biotically. He had a huge list of rules for everything from how to speak to how to eat. If you think basic was regimented…"

Alenko trailed off and shook his head. "She just wanted a damn drink without a nosebleed, you know?"

She had a terrible feeling, a bad taste in her mouth, an ache in her gut. "What did he do to her?"

"Broke her arm." Alenko snapped his fingers, a sharp crack. "Say what else you want, his fine control of mass effect fields was unparalleled. Snapped it before anyone knew what was happening. I still remember the sound she made, as much shock and fear as pain. Vyrnnus laughed."

"I'd have beat his brains in," Shepard said, immediately, with real fervor and without thinking. She colored faintly. "I'm sorry. That was… tasteless."

"It's alright. That was kind of my reaction, too." He gave the kind of small self-deprecating laugh people give when they feel ashamed but don't want to admit it. "I stood up and faced him. No idea what I was going to do, just that enough was enough. And that was apparently what he was waiting for."

"He fought you?"

"He flew at me. Completely lost his mind, assuming he ever had it in the first place, screaming that his people should've bombed us back to the stone age. When I dodged his initial attack, the knife came out. Military-grade talon right in my face. He gave me a good cut over my eye." Alenko rubbed his right eyebrow, unconsciously, recalling the wound. "I couldn't see. I couldn't think. I panicked, and let loose a full biotic kick right in the mandible. Seventeen years old and I threw him so hard against the bulkhead that it left a dent in the metal."

"And that was how he died," she said when the pause stretched to a conversational stop, stating the obvious, a gentle prompt. Inside, however, Shepard was seething. Knife work wasn't her forte, but she knew enough to realize Vyrnnus hadn't gashed his forehead deliberately. He'd aimed for the eyes and missed. This from a person entrusted with the care of children. From where she stood, he was lucky to already be dead.

Alenko wouldn't meet her gaze. "Snapped his neck. Maybe he could've lived if they got to him in time, but they didn't. Caused a stir with the Hierarchy when they shipped him back to Palaven. The resulting minor international incident shut down the program. The Alliance covered up what they could, but it was a spectacle for a few weeks there."

"And Rahna? You defended her. It's hard to see what made her mad."

"She was horrified. Watching someone she trusted lose control like that, kill somebody, even someone like Vyrnnus, scared the hell out of her. She never spoke to me again." He hesitated for a long moment, as if debating whether to elaborate. "After I got home, a few months later, I sent her a birthday present. I spent three weeks picking out. Paid the postage to Turkey which even in this day and age wasn't easy for a jobless kid to come up with, and she sent it back stamped address unknown. I was still naïve enough to believe you could fix that kind of broken with an artisan barrette."

"It was a sweet gesture, even if it wasn't well-received."

"No, it was pathetic, but it's nice of you to say so." He cleared his throat and suddenly remembered the sponge in his hand, wringing it over the sink and started to rinse the surface. "So there it is. My worst break-up."

She studied him as he worked, noting the tension in his stance, the carefully blank expression on his face. "It wasn't your fault. You were a teenager with no combat experience up against a professional who should've known better."

"I know that." He washed out the sponge with clean water.

"I don't think that you do."

He gave her a frosty look. "With all due respect, ma'am, this is ancient history."

"It's not ancient when you still don't trust yourself to know the difference between an enemy and a friend, or to moderate your power between a blow that kills and one that disables."

His tone was stuffy and professional, though he rubbed at the counter with a bit more force than necessary. "I don't know what to say to that, ma'am."

"You know why it kills me every time someone on this ship gets hurt? Why I take it so personally?"

Alenko looked up at the ceiling, resentful, but curiosity got the best of him. "Ok, I'll bite. Why?"

She looked away, angry at herself for being so candid and frustrated that it was so challenging to take down a piece of her personal armor, a conflict of motivation. "I was second in command on that mission to Akuze. Fifty of my people died while I ran away. It was the right thing to do, it was the _only_ thing to do, and god knows I tried to rally them, but all the same, they died and I lived and it's because I was smart instead of loyal. That's what I carry with me. This one is yours. You can't lie and say it doesn't mark you."

They worked in silence for awhile after that, both scrubbing away, up to their elbows in soap and water. She both despised this distance between them, and appreciated that he understood it so well. It was exactly like with Liara. Not every door in her mind was open to her, not even with a crowbar and a will. It was the only way she could survive. It never occurred to her that other people might have the same problem.

"Why do you do this?" Alenko asked, after a minute or two. "Poke and prod me until you get at a story?"

"I'm sorry. I have a tendency to offend people without realizing it."

"I'm not offended. Just curious." He was watching her closely, with a peculiar expression.

Shepard went with the frank response. "I like trying to figure you out. Most people lay it all out for anyone to see, but you make me work for it. And usually the stories people don't want to tell speak more to their truth than the ones they give away."

"So I'm just some kind of puzzle to you."

She stared down at her counter. "I like hearing you talk. When I'm speaking with you like this, off-duty, I can be normal for a little bit, knowing when it's back to work, you'll treat me with exactly the same respect as before. There aren't that many people I can… trust like that."

Then she found a smirk, and resumed rinsing away the soap. "Besides, you pry at me just as much. Don't even try to pretend you don't."

"We're friends, right?" The lighthearted note was back in his voice, momentary gravity passed.

She was relieved that he wasn't going to press her for more detail. He had a talent for guessing the limits of her tolerance. "The kind of friends who pick each other to death?"

"My dad used to tell me if you're not driving each other crazy, you're doing something wrong."

She threw her sponge at him. It bounced off a barrier with a cascade of blue light. "You're going to have to do better than that. As noted, I grew up with a bunch of biotic kids."

So, naturally, she tossed the entire bucket. Which caused him, covered in suds, to pick up the spray attachment for the sink. It wasn't long before they were both soaking wet, laughing, and had almost entirely forgotten what started the aquatic battle in the first place.


	33. Chapter 33

Shepard stood under the shower head with her face turned up to the water, eyes shut, utterly relaxed.

The other women preparing for the day gave her the occasional odd look- she hadn't moved for the better part of a half hour- but she didn't allow a little thing like that to put her off. Her father joked that if it weren't for hot baths, she'd never go groundside. He could be right. Space on ships and stations was at far too great a premium for such an extravagance.

The door to the bathroom swung open. "Ma'am?"

Williams. Shepard kept her attention on the feeling of water brushing her cheeks. "What?"

There was a long pause. "You do know they shut the hot water off after the first ten minutes?"

Hot water wasn't in short supply aboard ship. Time, however, often was. The automatic VI cutoff for each user was intended to encourage steady traffic through the facilities at the busiest times, and to prevent the crew from doing exactly this- spending their whole morning allotment in the shower.

Shepard merely smiled. "I have the memory of hot water."

Williams' cautious and baffled expression caught her eye. Clearly, she was wondering whether her commanding officer stayed too long at the fair. Shepard sighed, turning away from the showerhead and laying her arms on the partition, flicking her hair out of her face. "What do you need?"

"Liara and Garrus are looking for you, ma'am. Also, the X.O. wants to discuss destination again."

"If the former has good news for me, it'll make the latter happier." She shut off the tap at last and wrapped a towel around herself. Walking to the mirror, she started pinning up her bun. "Think I can avoid Pressly for another thirty minutes or so?"

There was no reply. Shepard shot a querulous glance over her shoulder, smirking. "You're not really going to give me a hard time about the only twenty minutes I'm likely to have to myself today?"

Williams' mouth was hanging open. She closed it abruptly. "Sorry, ma'am."

But she continued to stare, and not at Shepard's face. The commander frowned and twisted until she found the source of her attention. "Oh, that. I got a little shot."

"That… scar doesn't look like a little anything, ma'am." Williams swallowed.

"It was at close range." That mistake all but destroyed her shoulder. Even with the magic of state-of-the-art medical care, she'd fidgeted, complained, and all but tore her hair out behind a desk for almost five months waiting for the bone implants to grow in and the muscle to strengthen.

"You were shot in the back at close range." The implication was obvious. The chief's eyebrows were in danger of colliding with her hairline.

"Yeah." Then she added, philosophically, "On the other hand, it obliterated a rather awful tattoo. Never get blackout drunk down in the wards."

"They can do something about scars, you know."

Shepard turned back to the mirror. "Trying to erase the past is a sign of self-delusion. It's ugly, but it's mine and we're stuck with each other. Let our friends know I'm on my way."

Williams knew a dismissal when she heard it. "Aye, ma'am."

She saluted before departing. Shepard finished cleaning up, pulled on a set of utilities, and went to find their resident turian and asari.

Liara and Garrus were holed up the entire way from Artemis Tau to the Alliance facility where they deposited the _Fedele _personnel- patients, engineers, vorcha, the whole lot. Shepard was grateful sorting that mess was somebody else's problem. Dahlia's remaining crew were silent for the duration of the cruise, refusing to answer questions once the immediate danger was past. No doubt they were thinking to their futures- especially once they learned the Citadel was not their destination. Being members of the council races bought a lot of special consideration so long as they remained within the scope of their direct influence. The Systems Alliance wouldn't treat asari different from any other potential foreign threat.

Garrus was trying to piece together his files on Saren with Liara's information on Benezia. So far, there were few points of commonality. There was nothing to suggest why an asari matriarch would show so much interest in a turian spectre. Shiala's affirmation that Benezia was aware of his activities and wanted to steer him towards the light, as it were, was equally baffling. Why would she choose to go undercover instead of bringing it to the attention of the Council? From what Shepard read of Benezia's past, the matriarch was a significant player in Thessian politics.

She found the pair in Liara's lab, datapads, holos, and other documents scattered over the counters. On the wall was a two-dimensional web of evidence not unlike Shepard's 3D counterpart in the mental space she shared with the asari scientist. The nightmares continued unabated, but their bite faded into a familiar horror over time. Mostly, now, they merely reminded her of how far the still had to go. It was amazing what could become normal.

Shepard leaned against the wall without preamble. "Chief Williams said you needed to see me?"

"Commander." Liara smiled. "We may have something. It's tenuous, but…"

"Show me."

Garrus rose and gestured towards the wall. "Our early mistake was in focusing on their political careers. Not much overlap there. But then I remembered something you said."

She snorted. "What was that?"

"When you complained about your poverty." He smirked. "Saren is a wealthy man. And one of those things you learn in police work is that money often not only talks, but screams at the top of its lungs."

He tapped at a datapad. The display projected on the wall changed. Shepard strayed closer, rubbing her chin, as he explained the new data. "So instead of his political connections, we started looking at his commercial interests, along with Benezia's."

"My mother holds advisory positions in a number of corporate enterprises. They valued her insight and her influence with various governments." Liara paused, licked her lips. "It always made us very… comfortable, but as a child I never knew the details. And after so many years with little contact I'm certain what I did know is no longer in date."

"I hope you're not about to tell me you called mom up on the comm."

Liara was affronted. "Of course not. I did, however, put out a few feelers with the staff she left on Thessia. Anyone who wasn't trusted enough to follow along when she went to Saren would not have been informed of her plan."

Shepard was dubious. "And they just gave up the information, no questions asked? They had to know you and Benezia were on the ropes."

"That her only daughter would not speak to her while the rest of the asari fell at her feet was an embarrassment. She didn't wish it to become public knowledge. You examined her public profiles yourself and had no idea until we met."

The explanation was passable. "Still a hell of a risk. I hope none of her people are sending her updates."

"I doubt it. Shiala indicated my mother is… indoctrinated, somehow. When she left, in her true frame of mind, she would not have wanted to endanger them." Liara turned her attention back to the board. "I got a list of companies. One of them is Binary Helix."

Binary Helix was a well-known genetic and bio-engineering firm. Their controversial research drove them into the Traverse around the same time the Alliance started establishing colonies in earnest. Plenty of people still felt conflicted about any genetic modification of human beings, much less those that were less necessary and more cosmetic, or pushed the boundaries of what one could define as naturally human.

Shepard turned to Garrus. "Please tell me we have a match."

"Their board of directors lists Saren Arterius as a member for the last five years. He's a key investor." Garrus brimmed with smug self-satisfaction. "But it gets better. I called in a favor with a friend in C-Sec to pull their personnel files. Matriarch Benezia was recently added to corporate roster as an 'executive secretary', whatever that means, but more importantly she was designated as Saren's executor."

"So… she can manage his stake in Binary Helix on his behalf, and vote in his stead on the board?"

"Essentially."

"Alright." Shepard chewed that over. "So Saren trusts her, or trusts whatever voodoo job he's done on her head, anyway. This still doesn't tell us where to look."

"I thought of that." Liara entered a few commands into her terminal. The holo projection now displayed a system in the Horsehead Nebula. "I drew up a list of all their facilities, and interpolated that with our other findings. It led me here, Noveria."

"It looks like a wasteland." The data from the computer indicated it possessed a nitrogen-oxygen atmosphere, on the very edges of the Pax System's green zone. Most of the planet was frozen over. The only settlement, Port Hanshan, was located in the heart of a glacier-bound mountain range deep in the southern hemisphere.

Liara shrugged. "It's perfect for what they're trying to do. Noveria is a private world, funded by a consortium of two dozen research firms, mostly biotech. They've built elaborate labs within the mountains- easy to contain if something got loose. Few organisms can survive the cold and the labs are very isolated from one another."

Shepard sat back on her heels. "Not to mention from the rest of the galaxy. I bet this 'Noveria Development Corporation' hosts a lot of questionable projects away from prying eyes."

Garrus gave her a sidelong glance. "Nobody was happier than the criminals and nutcases when your Alliance began settling the Traverse. A whole realm of remote space unregulated by the Citadel, with the human navy to buffer them from the Traverse? They were all but dancing."

"It's not our fault the Council didn't want to pour any resources into colonizing their problem areas," she remarked lightly, prodding him with good humor.

"And I'm sure if the Council wanted to exercise oversight, the Alliance would have welcomed the scrutiny with open arms." His mandible twitched.

Shepard laughed.

"If we could return to the point," Liara interrupted, with a hint of impatience. "Aren't you the least bit interested in why the search was narrowed to Noveria?"

She raised an eyebrow. "Only if it's interesting."

Garrus' mirth died. "This is where we need a little of your help, Shepard."

Liara tabbed to the next screen. "We ran some forensics on this message."

Staring back at her was the Cerberus email from Feros. She rubbed her mouth and shook her head. "Fuck. Ok, you'd better start the beginning."

It turned out to be more straightforward than she feared. They traced the email based on its originating address and sender, Dr. Cynthia Wayne. That information, courtesy of a little grease from Liara's scientific contacts and Garrus' C-Sec connections, yielded additional intel, including a personal dossier and shipment logs. Shepard examined them with increasing confusion. "They're collecting tissue samples and specimens from obscure worlds all over the Traverse."

"Yes." Liara folded her arms and leaned back against the counter. "Logically, one would expect the final destination for all these shipments to be the same, but we've been unable to identify it. They've laundered it well."

The commander flipped to the dossier. It showed a smiling blonde, heavy set, with her hair cut into a rather drab bob. "She's ex-Alliance."

Garrus cocked his head. "That surprises you?"

"No. Anderson mentioned something about Cerberus recruitment tactics." She paged through the file. Her frown deepened. "She was the senior medical officer assigned to the 106th Marine Division."

"What does that mean?"

She shook her head. "Doesn't mean anything. I deployed with a squadron of the 106th on Akuze."

Liara leaned in, reading over her shoulder. "You knew her?"

"No. I wasn't assigned to that unit. They dropped in special forces to lead the op. The guys hated us for it, they always do. You learn not to mind. Wayne didn't deploy with us." She flipped to the next section. "And she was an advisor on the Ascension Project until she was discharged a year ago."

Garrus had an excellent memory. "One of the biotic terrorists mentioned that program. What is it?"

"A school from human biotic children. It replaced that crazy-ass training camp Kaidan and the very angry woman we picked up got thrown into, but it's less clinical and more educational. Completely transparent to public scrutiny."

He folded his arms. "She also mentioned students were disappearing from it."

"Hackett denied that. Said sometimes people just fall off the radar, which is true enough." Shepard chewed her lip, staring at the holo. At the time, she accepted his explanation at face value. But now she could feel a hint of doubt creeping in.

Liara summarized the feeling succinctly. "I think perhaps you should ask him again."

"I will." There was a flat quality to the words. Shepard didn't like being kept in the dark. Somebody was actively concealing intel from her, intel that appeared increasingly relevant to her case. What was so dirty that the Alliance didn't want her to find it?

Liara touched her arm, tentatively. "Shepard?"

With visible effort, she smoothed her scowl, and cleared her throat. "I take it one of these Cerberus shipments originated from Noveria?"

"From a Binary Helix hot lab," Garrus confirmed.

Shepard let it marinate a few long moments, then nodded, tossing the datapad aside. "Well, what are we waiting for?"

Garrus and Liara exchanged a broad smile. Shepard paused at the hatch. "Keep working this. Anything else you can get me before we hit Port Hanshan will be helpful. Nice job. Very nice."

She left them to it and went in search of her cranky executive officer.

In the months since they met, Navigator Pressly hadn't exactly warmed to his new C.O. He was too disciplined to ever offer back-talk, but she could see him thinking it, every other order she gave. There was a palpable air of disapproval whenever they were in proximity to each other. And while he wasn't the type to spout off in public, everyone needed to vent their frustrations eventually, and a little of his hot air made it back to her ears. Shepard let it go. It was going to take more than a few jabs privately spoken to ruffle her. As long as he kept following her orders, she couldn't care less what he thought of her.

Those facts didn't stop her from wishing her CIC was a little more comfortable, once in awhile. Shepard stepped up to the galaxy map and pulled up the Horsehead Nebula to trace out the relay route.

Pressly soon took note of her plans. "Noveria, ma'am?"

"There's a connection between Saren, Benezia, and all these strange things we keep encountering waiting down this rock. We need to check it out."

"Understood, ma'am." He pushed his fingers against the haptic keys of his terminal. "We should arrive in… eight days, ten if we're unlucky."

"Worried about relay priority queuing?" In a few systems, convincing the controllers to move them to the head of the line proved problematic.

"It gets less and less likely now that people are getting to know you." Pressly bent over his work.

Shepard let him work a few moments, glancing at him sidelong. "I know this isn't what you signed on for."

He didn't look up. "Pardon, ma'am?"

"You agreed to this posting because Anderson asked you. You served with him on the _SSV Tokyo_, right?"

"Heh." He shook his head. "You have an excellent memory, Commander. We were two years together on that boat, along with Lieutenant Adams."

"That was a cruiser. Lots of heavy fighting, not so much recon."

"No, ma'am." Pressly chuckled a bit. "Hadn't been on a frigate since… never been on a frigate, come to think of it, not for more than a day anyhow."

"You never signed up to be ordered around by some hotshot, hot-headed commander young enough to be your daughter."

He did look up at that, startled by her candor, and met her eyes. "I never said that, ma'am, never."

"I know. And I appreciate that." She returned his gaze steadily. "I'm the biggest thing to happen to the Systems Alliance since Grissom went through the relay. I'm moving the direction of a war that may well determine our right to exist within this territory. Straight up, Pressly, chain of command or no if I didn't want you here, you wouldn't be here. You're doing excellent work."

"The fact that sometimes you actually seem to believe that stream of pure newsvid bullshit scares the hell out of me, ma'am." He spoke before his brain was able to intervene. As the words caught up with him, the blood drained from his face.

Shepard laughed and shook her head. "And the fact that I have to goad you that hard to make you speak your mind scares the hell out of me. I'm not Anderson. I don't have years of ship command overlaying my spec ops service to adjust my instincts to a wider dynamic range. You want my attention, sometimes you need to get in my face. I'm tuned to discard pretty much everything else."

"I'll bear that in mind."

"Good." She finished entering her commands, and took a shot in the dark. "I don't suppose you know anything about a terrorist organization calling themselves Cerberus?"

"Never heard of them."

"It's alright. Up until several weeks ago, I never did either."

"Wait." Pressly stared into space, speaking slowly. "I got an email once. It was strange. I reported it right away, of course, but the phrasing was very odd. The author talked about a three-headed dog and guarding the gates to the future. Cult stuff. It got intelligence excited, I'll say that. My ship had to set back down so they could depose me for a day or two. Never did figure out what all the fuss was about."

"Cerberus was a three-headed dog that stood guard over Hades, in Greek mythology. Each of its three heads supposedly looked to past, present, and future." She felt a cold knot form her stomach. "Could have been a recruitment attempt. Sounds like you dodged a bullet."

She caught him by surprise. "You know mythology, ma'am?"

"I majored in philosophy. Very old, very dead Greeks featured rather prominently." She fussed with her instruments, trying to hide her faint embarrassment.

"Philosophy?" He sounded like he'd just swallowed a fly.

"They told me I needed to go to college to become an officer, and it seemed the least likely thing to take me out of a combat role," she muttered. "And it's easier to write lots of papers with semi-fluid deadlines from a starship bunk than stick to a more… rigorous discipline."

"You selected your field of study because it was easy and useless?"

"My field of study is what I do every day," she replied hotly. "And it wasn't like that. I was trying to… game the system, a little bit. It's stupid that you need a degree for something that has nothing to do with traditional education."

He snorted disbelief. "How someone as rebellious as you winds up in the military defies belief."

"Thank my mother." She logged off. "Eight days?"

"Aye, ma'am."

"Plenty of time to get ready, then." She nodded and turned to go. "Carry on, Pressly."

The remainder of the crew were excited to see some real progress made- finally. The high from their success on Feros began to fade in the face of weeks of side trips and dead ends. There was a new energy about the ship as everyone turned their attention to preparations for Noveria.

Shepard finished giving orders to her top-level people and spent the afternoon examining every piece of information on Port Hanshan and NDC she could lay her hands on. Prior overtures from the Citadel and the Systems Alliance were both politely, if coldly, rebuffed. Their investment firms didn't want anybody offering oversight on their work. It left a sour feeling in Shepard's gut. They could be doing anything up in those mountains. Illegal genemods would require human testing- or whatever relevant species- at some point in the trials. At that might be only the beginning.

_Why do we let this happen? The Systems Alliance defends this territory. They should be subject to our laws._ She knew the reasons, of course. Each colony was quasi-independent, and the privately funded ones even more so. The Alliance didn't have the personnel, ships, or resources to enforce their regulations this far out into the Traverse, and less palatably, they liked the enrichment turning a blind eye brought to their economy.

However, it seemed unlikely they would refuse docking clearance to a spectre. NDC's position was tenuous. They wouldn't provoke the Citadel to take a more active interest in their enterprise by interfering overtly with her mission. NDC would realize any involvement of Binary Helix in colonial attacks was beyond their ability to successfully conceal while maintaining their cozy independence. So they'd let her land, conduct her investigation, and show her the door as quickly as possible. That didn't mean they'd enjoy it, or wouldn't exploit every opportunity to subtly undermine her work.

Specialist Lowe interrupted her internal strategizing. "Ma'am, it's just past 0900 hours GST. You asked to be informed."

"Thanks." Galactic Standard and Terran Universal Time were sufficiently different that their two daily calendars precessed slowly about one another. Shepard needed to brief Anderson on their new plan and see if Udina could do anything to grease the wheels for them on Noveria.

She got up and headed aft. "Get me the ambassador's office on the comm."

"The comm's in use, Commander. Chief Williams reserved the time." The crew mainly communicated with their families back home via email and vid messages. However, they were given an allotment of minutes each month for making live calls. Standard navy procedure. "Should I inform her there is a higher-priority message?"

"No, I'll kick her off. Let her be pissed at me."

"Yes, ma'am." There was a hint of relief in the specialist's tone.

When she reached the hatch, however, she found Chief Williams' voice, though muffled, still came clearly through the door. It held undercurrents of amusement. "Oh, Abby, you didn't."

"You should talk." There was giggling. 'Abby' sounded a good bit younger than Ash. "I saw Lieutenant Alenko in the news vids. He's cute. I'm jealous."

Ash snorted. "Of what?"

Her tone became more arch, teasing. "Must make life more interesting, serving under a hot-"

"Oh come on," Ash groaned. "This is serious, not some kind of bad movie. There are regs against this crap." Then she sighed and dropped the lecture. "Anyway, when the commander's in the room, I think he forgets other women exist. The poor guy has got it bad."

Shepard's heart gave a small and thoroughly unexpected jump in her chest, utterly gobsmacked.

Abby snickered. "You go to all this effort to make a ship posting seem so stuffy. It's not working. Badass spectres, sexy lieutenants, half-machine turian bad guys…"

"Alright, when you put it like that, it does sort of sound like b-roll from a late night vid. But it's not- I shouldn't have said anything. What is or is not going on is waaaay above my paygrade."

Shepard put her hand to her mouth and tried to swallow her sudden flush and the accompanying quick silly grin. There was more muffled laughter, and a following exchange too low for her to hear. She drew in a breath- enough was enough- cleared her throat, and tagged open the hatch, a carefully neutral expression fixed on her face.

Williams came to attention immediately, her face bright red. "Uh, Commander, ma'am- I didn't, uh, see you there."

Shepard gave her best withering look. "Calling home, Chief?"

She was mortified. "Tell me you did not just hear that."

"Afraid so." The commander's tone was dry enough to shrivel sand.

The laughter from the comm was uproarious. She managed to catch a breath and choke out, "Later, sis" before the link went dead.

"My youngest sister, Abby." Williams swallowed and glanced from the comm to her C.O. "Can we just pretend this never happened?"

"Works for me." Shepard jerked her thumb at the hatch. "I need to update Anderson, so skidaddle."

Williams saluted. "Yes, ma'am!"

The chief hightailed it out of the comm room like her ass was on fire. Shepard managed to maintain her austerity until the hatch shut, but only just. She leaned against the rail a long moment and tried to recover her composure. It was surprisingly challenging while her inner fourteen-year-old jumped up and down and did three sixty spins between her boots touching the ground.

Lowe's voice crackled into the cabin. "Chief Williams just walked by, ma'am. Should I connect the call?"

"Give me a moment."

"Very well."

Shepard looked up at the blank holo screen, at her reflection in the glass, and addressed it sternly. "Stop smiling. You are a professional."

The admonition didn't do much to kill the fizzy feeling in her stomach. She attempted reason. _It's only scuttlebutt. People have been bored since Feros, Williams especially. That was why you took her aboard the Fedele, right? To get the fidgets out? She's inventing drama to amuse herself._

It wasn't an idea she'd allowed herself to entertain for longer than a few minutes here and there, wistfully. Leaving aside the complications with the UCMJ and the fact that Shepard didn't have the energy to fight Saren, geth, the Council, AND Alliance Command all at the same time, it wasn't her experience that stable people sought out unstable people. Alenko was capable enough to have his pick of career tracks and he'd selected just about the most mundane combat option possible- a marine officer serving on serial extended deployments. He wanted that. She'd jumped into N1 and a life utterly lacking in predictability and never looked back. At least, not until the last year or so.

It never occurred to her that she could be the type of person he would feel that way about in reality. The notion was warm and fragile in her mind, like if she considered it too intently it would fracture into dust.

Lowe interrupted her thoughts again, with a touch of impatient concern. "Ma'am? I'm ready to initiate the transmission at any time."

There were calls to navigate, plans to lay, a mission to complete. Shepard wasn't permitted the luxury of distraction. Or daydreams. Even rather nice ones.

_Ash is imagining things, _she told herself firmly. It didn't work. Anderson was just going to have to live with the damn stupid grin. She could blame it on the breakthrough in their investigation. "Do it."

The call went on for more than three hours. Shepard explained recent developments to Anderson and the ambassador, quietly leaving out the Cerberus connection. If the captain didn't want her exploring that alley she wasn't quite stupid enough to walk down it right under his nose. Noveria Development Corporation and Binary Helix were both incorporated in the Systems Alliance, and Udina got one of his old friends from Arcturus to send over their records. There wasn't much new information on genetics firm. It confirmed Saren's position within the company, though there was no listing for Benezia, and the only recent news of any interest was a settlement paid by the company to a private collective of krogan investors for failure to deliver results on a study of potential solutions to the genophage. Shepard filed that away, recalling the unexplained krogan presence on worlds occupied by Saren's forces.

The dossier on NDC was more interesting. Day-to-day operations groundside were overseen by a salarian administrator, Anoleis, but the company as a whole was run by an executive board whose members were not public. Udina guessed that they were likely appointed by each of the two dozen corporations fronting capital to the labs. Shepard had no reason to disagree.

According to him, the administrator enjoyed near-absolute authority on the site and was traditionally susceptible to bribery. Anderson was quick to assure her that the Alliance could not supply funding for such a purpose. Shepard remembered her cynical reaction to her research into the finances of her fellow spectres with a touch of chagrin. They mostly operated independently; sitting on the deck of a high-tech warship, she never considered what that might mean in terms of resources. Still, Anoleis might have other levers she could pull, not based on a small mountain of credits. Udina promised to look into it over the next few days.

In the end, they favored a surprise visit. They lacked an inside track on Binary Helix or NDC, and had much more to gain by putting them off-balance when a spectre landed on their doorstep wielding serious allegations of criminal activity. That was more Shepard's style. She laughed when Udina sourly requested she try to restrain herself while on Noveria. Shooting executives, he explained, would reflect poorly on humanity.

After the transmission terminated, she thought for a few minutes, debating with herself, before asking Lowe to contact Hackett's office. To her astonishment, he actually took the call, though she did have to wait thirty minutes before he appeared on _Normandy's _vid comm. "Commander Shepard."

"Admiral." She saluted. "I hope I'm not interrupting anything."

"I hope whatever you have to say is important enough to cause an interruption," he said dryly.

She dropped the feeble attempts at diplomacy. Directness suited her better anyway. "We've identified a connection between Saren Arterius and the human terrorist group known as Cerberus. I need access to those files but I'm getting stonewalled through other channels."

Hackett regarded her a long moment. His gaze truly was intimidating, if she was the sort of person susceptible to those tactics. As it was, she marked him as the kind of superior officer who didn't suffer fools and would make you pay for any bullshit. "Explain this connection."

It took her a few sentences to lay out their findings. "It's pervasive, sir. Everywhere we find Saren, we find Cerberus."

He seemed conflicted. "I see where you're coming from, Commander, but I'm not convinced granting you access is in anyone's best interests."

"May I ask what led you to that conclusion, sir?"

"I can have my people comb the data for relevant intelligence." Hackett sidestepped the question. "There's twenty six years of reports. I don't want you getting bogged down in minutia."

Shepard stared. "What is in those files so awful nobody wants me to see it?"

"Those files are extraordinarily sensitive and you don't need to know everything that's in them." Hackett's hands clasped behind his back, standing easy. "Was there anything else you needed to discuss, Commander?"

That was a dismissal. It rankled, but she could tell she'd reached the limits of his generosity. The knowledge did nothing to keep the resentment from her eyes.

"No, sir," she said curtly.

"Good luck. We're counting on you to bring this bastard down." He reached forward to end the call. "Hackett out."

Silence filled the comm room. Shepard licked her lips and rapped her knuckles against the rail once, before turning on her heel and making her was down to engineering.

As the elevator descended, she couldn't escape the feeling that even _thinking _about what she intended to do was a damning indication of how much the spectre appointment had already changed her. But another, and louder, voice declared that Shepard had never allowed her superiors to get in the way of fulfilling her duty- she'd just never had anyone on her team to whom the words "illegal orders" did not apply.

She found the quarian far aft, interfacing directly with the drive core. The data feeds on her screen might as well have been sanskrit for all Shepard could derive their meaning. Tali turned, brightly, her posture pleased. "Shepard. What brings you down here?"

They had to talk loudly over the throbbing bass of the Tantalus drive. Just as well; this wasn't a conversation the commander wanted overheard. Shepard leaned towards her. "Just how good with a computer are you, Tali'Zorah?"

"I've only been tinkering with any tech I could get my hands on since I learned how to read." She tilted her head. "Why?"

Shepard took a breath and made up her mind. "Because I need someone who can hack into a secured database on Arcturus for me."

Several blinks, in rapid succession, behind the mask. Slowly, she asked, "Won't that get you in a lot of trouble with your government?"

"That's why we're not going to get caught."

/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\

Shepard's tongue flashed between her teeth as she considered the cards approximately five centimeters from her nose. "I'll raise you five."

She tossed the chit to the center of the mess table. Joker shook his head. "You're going to live to regret that, ma'am. Called."

Liara shuffed her cards nervously. "What does that mean again?"

Alenko, who had good-naturedly sat out the first several hands to help her learn the rules, patiently repeated, "Put a marker for five credits in the pot if you want to keep playing."

"Oh, right." She tentatively picked out the appropriate chit and pushed it forward.

"Don't asari gamble?" an incredulous Williams asked.

"Not so… ritualistically."

"Are we here to play or gab?" Joker complained.

"Called," Alenko said, not bothering to glance at his cards lying face-down on the table. Shepard noticed he hardly ever did the first round, and also that Liara tended to win the hands he assisted, and wondered if he'd been slightly more serious than she assumed when he joked he was a better liar during a card game.

Shepard had decided that even if Williams was right about his feelings towards her- and that still seemed a big if- the best thing was to ignore it. What else was she supposed to do? She was the C.O. and it was a small ship. So here she was, studiously ignorant, and disguising the occasional nonchalant peek over the top of her cards.

Williams, on the other hand, couldn't stop playing with her cards, stacking them up, fanning them back out, tapping them on the table. She studied them again and groaned irritation. "Fold."

Wrex, his hands almost comically large around the human-sized deck, grunted. "Called."

"Raise is called," Joker said, reaching for the deck and beginning to dole out additional cards. Shepard discarded two and added the replacements to her hand, considering the new possibilities.

Williams slouched in her seat, her thumbs hooked through her belt. "So what do you think we're going to find on Noveria, ma'am?"

"Dunno." They were on the last leg of their relay transit. In sixteen hours, give-or-take, they should be entering Noverian airspace. "A corporate shitshow, I expect."

Wrex grinned. "Maybe it'll be overrun with geth, like the last place." He sounded excited by the possibility.

Chief Williams shared his enthusiasm. "I can always stand a little more target practice."

Shepard didn't think it likely, but didn't want to get drawn into another bull session on their adversary, either. "Check."

Joker eyed his cards. "Check."

"Check," Liara said, after a moment's consideration. "Do you think Tali might be right, about the possibility of geth individuality? That they're not clones of each other?"

Shepard kept her attention on the game. "Don't know, don't care."

"You don't think it's an interesting question?" Alenko turned up the corners of his hand, just enough to see, and tossed a twenty-credit chit into the pot. "Raise."

"Called." She was sardonic. "I think it's a question for people who aren't in the middle of a war with them. It doesn't matter if they're distinct, or sentient, or eat extranet data reports like we eat peanut butter sandwiches. They're our adversary. That's all I need to know."

"Damn straight," Williams muttered.

"Yeah," Joker said. "It's not like they have… souls, or anything."

Shepard glanced at him. "You ever meet an AI?"

"How can you meet something that's not alive?" he protested. "Oh, and fold. You guys obviously know something I don't about this hand."

"I met one," she continued steadily. "Three years ago. Do you remember the training accident on Luna Base?"

Alenko's interest piqued. "The one that killed twenty marines and nine support staff?"

"It wasn't a training accident. Not as such. They'd evolved a carefully leashed AI from the Hannibal Defense Simulator running the exercise. I think they were trying to exploit the gray area between VI limitations and full synthetic self-awareness, but lost control. When it stopped responding to their commands and fired on the trainees, they sent in a strike team under my command." She fastidiously arranged her cards in numeric order. "I have never heard any being, of any species, so full of rage as when we shut down Hannibal's final server."

Joker raised his eyebrows. "Rage, commander? Emotion? Sounds sketchy."

"I know what I heard. I don't know whether it had a soul and I don't know if it was anything like you or me, but it sure as hell was alive enough to feel that."

"That's heresy," Ash said flatly. "Machines aren't alive. Period."

Liara lay her cards down on the table, a silent fold. "My university had a registered artificial intelligence, used by the math department. I never heard any of the faculty speak of it as though it possessed any emotion. But humans are often volatile, so perhaps your programming style is more colorful as well."

She caught the dubious stares of the four humans sitting at the table and blushed, ducking her head.

Wrex rumbled, "I guess it's a good thing krogan don't mess around with AI."

"You may have a point there." Shepard chuckled despite herself, remembering the krogan mercenary fighting with the VI back on Feros. She raised her eyebrows at him. "Call or fold?"

He grunted and tossed a chit onto the pile.

Joker looked around the table. "Show 'em, folks."

Wrex set down three sixes. Alenko managed to put together a low-value straight. Shepard rolled her eyes and dropped her cards with a certain amount of disdain.

Alenko raised an eyebrow. "You called on a pair of sevens?"

"I thought you were bluffing," she replied, a bit put out. "It was a big raise."

"We hadn't had one for awhile. The game was starting to get boring."

"What happened to strategy?" she groused.

"This is chicken stakes, not tournament play. It's not like I can't start over every round." He gathered in his winnings with candid amusement. "I think you're just annoyed because dangling a challenge in front of you is like tossing a bone to a varren. You leap every time."

"That's not it at all," she protested, though she was somewhat drowned out by the snickering of the rest of the table. "Is it?"

"No comment, ma'am." Williams didn't bother to disguise her sly grin as she passed her cards back to Joker, who started to shuffle.

She turned to the pilot. "Joker?"

He cleared his throat and acted like he hadn't heard the question. Liara remarked, with delicacy, "You do have a certain inclination to rash behavior in the face of immediate conflict."

Williams was more blunt. "You don't choose fight _or_ flight. You choose whatever makes the biggest splash."

She turned back to Alenko. "And you're comfortable using that against me?"

"I go through whatever door's available." He smirked. "You're the one complaining I wasn't using a proper strategy."

Her eyes narrowed. "That's _sneaky_."

"I rather thought you'd approve of sneaky," he said airily, unconcerned.

"Save it for the next round." Joker dealt out the cards, and after a quick examination, started things off with a ten-credit bet.

"Oh, believe me, I will," Shepard muttered, staring critically at her hand.

The following hand didn't take long. She never got her opportunity for revenge; Liara started to fold once more, but Alenko opted out instead to offer encouragement. The asari's analytical skills made her a decent player, for a newcomer, but she sorely lacked any confidence in her skills. Wrex was out in the first round, disgusted with his hand and growing frustrated with the "fiddly game", and Joker followed in the second round. Shepard managed to put together a slightly stronger hand than last time, enough to beat Liara's two pair, but Williams managed to come from behind and wipe them both out with a full house.

She beamed at their surprise. "My sisters and I used to play all the time. It's hard getting to know other kids when you get a new posting every year."

"I hear that," Shepard said, intimately familiar with life as a navy brat. "Your dad teach you how to play?"

"You guessed it. He was better though." She incorporated her additional chits into the almost neurotically precise stacks arrayed before her. Apparently, she was stricter with money than she was with any other of her possessions, which had been found scattered across the ship. "I like to think he smiles a bit when he sees me win a hand."

Shepard gave her a sidelong glance. "I thought your father passed away."

Williams sighed in exasperation. "Not watching me, watching me. Like from heaven."

"Ah," said Shepard, who had known, and also known better than to ask. It was like Christmas with her family. Smile and nod and play along and maybe the crazy wouldn't stick to you.

"How does that work?" Joker, who did not know, pulled a face. "Is this always-on surveillance, or selective? Like when you're with a boyfr- ow!"

Shepard wiped the oil from the hair on the back of his head off her palm onto his shirt. "Two things you never talk about while playing cards. Religion and politics."

"Unless we're trashing Udina, right? That's still ok?" Joker shook his head. "'Cause if I have to stop telling bullfrog jokes I need to seriously rethink my misdirection strategy."

He dealt again. Liara called the bet, as did the others in a quick whip around the table. Everyone discarded and contemplated the second round. Williams peered over the top her cards, as if daring her to say something, and drawled, "You look uncomfortable, ma'am. Does it bother you that I believe in god?"

"Not so long as it doesn't bother you that I don't," she retorted without looking up.

"I'm surprised you of all people don't believe there's something greater out there, after everything you've seen."

"That's exactly what convinces me there isn't. Anyone who would deliberately set out to make a world that runs like this is far too fucked up to be the master of creation."

Ash was taken aback. "There's no need to be intolerant."

She made a tching sound, and dragged her dog tags over her head, tossing them to Chief Williams. "Catch."

Williams snagged them out of the air and turned them over until she could see the writing properly. "Shepard N. Z. Service number blah blah SAN, blood type O negative- really? Isn't that ultra-rare?"

"Keep reading."

"Medical category 1, religion-" She paused, and frowned, surprised. "Catholic?"

"Family tradition, both sides. If it's going to make it easier on my parents when I die to have an old man say some magic words over my body, why should that bother me?" She shrugged. "I'm not intolerant. I just don't think respecting your beliefs requires silence about mine."

"You people argue about pointless things," Wrex interjected, scoffing. "Anyone can sing for the honored dead- friends, enemies, it doesn't matter. And if they're not worthy of honor, who cares?"

Shepard smiled. "I knew there was something I liked about you."

Williams appealed to the rest of the table. "C'mon, someone back me up here."

Alenko and Joker exchanged a panicked glance. Joker won. Alenko took a breath and blew it out, and replied succinctly. "I'm with the commander on this one. Some topics were designed to make friends hate each other."

"I'll raise," Joker followed, laying down a chit in an attempt to get back to the game.

Liara's brow scrunched up. "I didn't think it was your turn. Did I lose track?"

"It's not, but does anyone really care?"

"Called," Shepard said immediately.

"Called." Alenko added his token to the pile.

Williams, however, was not quite ready to let it go. "So how do you explain it, if there's no force behind it, no plan? The randomness of everything?"

Shepard ordered the cards in her hand. "There's a theory of psychiatry that states that personalities, self-awareness, is a series of complex standing quantum waves. We go out into the universe and our waves touch other waves, and in the froth of that interference lies how we paint our experiences- love, anger, hope, grief. Afterwards, the wave is literally not physically identical to how it was before, and that's how we grow."

She made a derisive sound. "No wonder you believe a computer can be a living thing."

"It explains why you can hook a VI up to a dead brain, run a little current through, and get a mimicry of the person who used to live there. The brain recalls its essential patterns."

Joker wrinkled his nose. "So, what, people don't die, they just lose touch with their circuitry? That doesn't sound a little crazy?"

"I don't know what happens after the body expires any more than you do," she replied steadily. "But personally? I think death is an illusion to trick us into feeling important. Objectively, we're not any more or less special than anything else in this galaxy just because we can talk."

Alenko glanced at her. "Explains why you don't get scared. If you think death isn't real, what's left to be afraid of?"

Williams sputtered. "But we're not the same. If we were, there'd be no way to make a decision between the life of a dog or the life of a human." She grew suspicious. "Is this why you're a vegetarian?"

Shepard burst out laughing. "No. I said the _idea _was objective, not that _I'm _objective. I assure you I'm quite biased."

Liara smiled. "I think it's quite nice. It's not all that different from what my people believe. When we die, we return to the greater, timeless whole that encompasses all of creation, as we do in small part in life when we meld with one another."

"One meld to rule them all?" Shepard joked dryly.

Joker groaned. "Commander, that joke was old like a hundred years ago."

"Can we shut up about all this heavy shit and gamble?" Wrex grumbled. "You're making my plates itch."

They turned over their cards. Shepard finally managed to win a round, narrowly beating out Alenko with a better high card on her straight. They continued playing for another hour or so, talking trash and laughing, until they dispersed to their respective beds to get some sleep before reaching Noveria.


	34. Chapter 34

The _Normandy's _pilot coughed and gave its C.O. a sidelong glance. "Nice duds."

Shepard didn't give him the satisfaction of glancing down at her attire. "I'm visiting as a Council Spectre. Spectres don't have a uniform."

She wanted to de-emphasize the Alliance Navy's involvement in this operation. Spectres commanded attention, but their objectives were quite focused. Noveria Development Corp would appreciate that. The Systems Alliance, on the other hand, was possessed of broader concerns, like regulations and taxation. Shepard didn't want her mission tangled up in NDC's paranoia or any ghosts of past negotiations with Colonial Affairs.

So, civvies. She stuck with her combat boots, not having many other options for footwear, black cargo pants scavenged from her utilities, a thin gray sweater and her familiar leather jacket. Her hair tumbled over her shoulders with a soft curl and a pistol rode easy on her hip.

They were skimming along the upper atmosphere of Noveria, approaching Port Hanshan. Dense cloud cover stretched out below the ship. Shepard leaned forward to get a better look, causing her jacket to fall open.

Joker caught sight of the special tactics and reconnaissance division emblem stitched into the sweater's right breast and let out a guffaw. "Don't tell me. Councilor Tevos gave you that thing with a handshake and a commemorative pen when you were inducted?"

"It's a cold planet," she groused. "What do you want from me? If I had a suit, I'd wear that, but I don't."

He laughed louder. "Seriously, where'd you pick it up? Like you said, no uniform."

She looked him dead in the eye. "My hand to god, the souvenir shop on the Presidium."

Before Joker could have any fun with that pronouncement, Bakari interrupted over the intercom. "We're being hailed by the Port Hanshan docking authority. They don't sound happy, ma'am."

"Put them through," Shepard directed.

There was a small burst of static as Bakari patched them in. "This is Approach Control, unknown ship, identify."

Joker cleared his throat. "Approach Control, this is the _SSV Normandy_, requesting a vector and a berth."

"_Normandy_, your arrival was not scheduled." The controller's hostility was plain. "Our defense grid is armed and tracking you. State your business."

The pilot glanced at Shepard. She gave him a nod, crossing her arms. He addressed the comm. "Citadel business. We've got a Council Spectre aboard."

The ship was starting to shake a bit; Shepard could see it through the windows as the high winds of a serious blizzard buffeted their craft like a toy, but for now, the momentum dampeners kept the interior smooth and stable.

"Roger that. Landing access granted. Be advised we will be confirming identification on arrival. If confirmation cannot be established, your vessel will be impounded."

"Yeah, great." Joker punched the button to terminate the call and gave all his attention to flying. A crease of concentration appeared on his brow, rare for him.

Shepard felt a kernel of concern lodge in her gut. "Are we good?"

"It's just a storm," he spat derisively, yanking the ship hard to starboard against a sudden gust. "This part's the worst. Once we break the cloud deck we'll be fine."

The bridge ports were solid white. Shepard's look was dubious.

Joker snapped, "_Normandy's _instruments know exactly where we are. A mere meteorological beating won't take my baby down. Now can you stop staring over my shoulder and let me do my job?"

She held up her hands in surrender and retreated to the CIC.

It took the better part of a half hour for the ship to clear NDC's decontamination procedures and docking bureaucracy before Shepard was allowed to step out the airlock. By the time Docking Control was done asking for various forms of authentication, Shepard rather felt like she'd bought a house. She took Williams and Alenko with her to watch her back, and Garrus as well in case his past week of total immersion into Binary Helix and NDC came in handy.

The docking bay was a large, straight tube that funneled them towards an expensive lobby done up in steel and pale green glass. But before they could proceed, a trio of guards in hardsuits stamped "ERCS" across the shoulder and breast confronted them.

Shepard took in each security officer in a rapid glance. Two humans and a turian, all of them armed with basic assault rifles, middle-of-the-line gear. She came to a stop about two meters from their leader, a pale woman with dark hair pulled back severely from an expressionless face. "Is there a problem, officer?"

The blonde to the leader's left curled her lip. "You better hope there isn't. This is an unscheduled arrival."

She dropped the words with a venom others might have reserved for "drug smuggling" or "weapons trafficking". It was all Shepard could do to stop herself from giving the woman a well-earned eye roll.

The dark haired woman spoke more mildly. "We need to examine your credentials."

Shepard tilted her head. "Wasn't this taken care of when we docked? Who are you?"

The blonde actually took a step towards her. "We're the law here. Show some respect."

The commander favored her with the kind of dismissive glare reserved for misbehaving children, before turning back to the leader.

The woman sighed. "I'm Captain Maeko Kimura, Elanus Risk Control Services. It's our job to ensure the safety of our residents and our guests."

"Spectre Nathaly Shepard. Good to meet you." She glanced around the lobby. "Any chance we could continue this inside? It's damn cold in this tube. You've got a hell of a storm out there."

"_You're _the spectre?" The blonde was insulted. She turned to her supervisor. "This is a truck of bullshit, ma'am. _And _they came in on a supposed navy ship, but the next patrol's not scheduled for two weeks."

"Stand down, Sergeant Stirling." To Shepard, Kimura said, "We will need to confirm that before I can allow you into Port Hanshan. Also, I must advise you that firearms are not permitted on Noveria."

She glanced at her squad. "I wasn't aware of any such prohibition."

"I'm afraid so." Kimura nodded to the blonde. "Sergeant, please secure their weapons."

Williams blurted out, "We're not really going to let them do this. Are we?"

Shepard exchanged a long look with Kimura. All she saw was an honest woman trying to fulfill her duty. If all else failed, she had a rather large knife sheathed in her boot- and besides, rifle or no, Shepard would be cold in the ground before she couldn't take a bottom-feeder like Stirling bare-handed. She shrugged. "Their house, their rules."

"But-"

"Can it, Ash," she said sharply. Williams grumbled. Kimura offered her a rueful glance of long-suffering sympathy.

Reluctantly, Shepard began to remove her sidearm, when the intercom came to life. "Stand down, Captain. Citadel Security just sent validation of her spectre code. Shepard and her associates are authorized to carry weapons here."

Shepard let go the gun and it slid back into its holster with a satisfying weight.

Kimura lowered her rifle. "You can proceed, spectre. On the behalf of NDC, welcome to Port Hanshan, and thank you for your cooperation."

Shepard gave her a curt nod and headed through the large glass doors. Alenko rubbed his arms as they headed up a staircase, past an ornate fountain. "And I thought Vancouver was cold."

Garrus was shivering. "Palaven's not exactly renowned in the ski tourism industry."

"Weather," Shepard harrumphed. "You can keep it."

A half a million sensors went off as they approached a long desk for final clearance into the facility. A woman in a tight hot pink dress came scuttling out from the back and slapped a button. The alarms died. Shepard raised her eyebrows.

"Weapons alarms. Pay them no mind." She smiled brightly, displaying perfect white teeth. Her lip gloss was shiny enough to rival the polished marble countertop of the desk. "I am Gianna Parasini, assistant to Administrator Anoleis. Allow me to apologize for the incident in the docking bay."

Shepard was not so easily put off. "It's pretty clear Kimura was ordered to either dissuade or delay us, Ms. Parasini. Is this how you greet authorized representatives of the Citadel here on business?"

The woman bowed deeply. "Again, I do apologize. Our highest aim is to treat all our guests with consideration. But surely you understand our security captain was only doing her job. The Executive Board does everything in its power to protect the privacy of our client corporations."

"I didn't come looking for corporate secrets or noncompliance, but your overreaction to my presence is highly suggestive."

"A misunderstanding only. Most of our high-profile guests give advance notice." Parasini, keen to smooth things over, reached under the desk and brought out a folded packet. "As a courtesy for your trouble, allow me to offer your party accommodations at our corporate hotel for the duration of your stay."

Shepard was about to reject the rather obvious bribe out of hand, when a picture in the glossy brochure caught her eye. "Is that a bathtub?"

"All of our rooms come fully equipped with a range of luxury services to suit our clientele."

Shepard hesitated, but the temptation was too great. She acquiesced. "Thank you."

Parasini beamed, bowing again. "If you'll head around the corner, the elevator will take you to the main level. Enjoy your stay."

They crowded into the carriage, another oval masterpiece with thick square panes lending it an almost greenhouse feel. Garrus gave her a very dry look. "We're susceptible to blackmail now?"

"Oh, come on, it wasn't like I spat on my hand and pinkie-swore to keep out of their business." Shepard rolled her shoulder. "The stick didn't work, so now they're hoping if they're nice to me I'll overlook whatever indiscretions they're trying to hide. It's hardly my fault if their strategy fails, though to be honest I couldn't care less if it doesn't lend me a clue about what I came for."

The elevator was almost certainly monitored, and Shepard was less than inclined to reveal any details of her mission before it became necessary. Let ERCS and Anoleis wonder what brought a spectre here. For that matter, let them think a cushy hotel room put her off her target, if it helped her sneak up behind Binary Helix. Maybe she should let it start to look that way, over the next few days.

The elevator doors opened onto a sweeping hall dotted here and there with fountains or planters, ramps and stair cases wandering its three terraced levels, while a floor-to-very-high-ceiling bank of windows dominated an entire side of the room. It displayed nothing but the fury of the storm. Port Hanshan was well snowed in.

Williams glanced around, appraisingly. "I like it. Very zen."

"Expensive, but tasteful," Alenko concurred.

"Lots of places for secret deals," was Garrus' rather mood-killing assessment.

Shepard kept her comments to herself, but she rather liked the port. The subdued rushing of the waterfall fountains soothed the mind, and the splashes of greenery relieved the dull gray stone comprising most of the room's structure. It could use a little wood, perhaps, just another textural element to warm the look a bit, but that was her only critique.

Businesspeople in sharp suits clustered in twos and threes around the room, gesturing at omni-tools and datapads. They would go quickly silent as the _Normandy _team walked by, only to resume in whispers once they were past. Shepard caught a few snippets about "the ones from the email", management, and something about a gag order. One of the security cameras must have captured their images and circulated it to the employee base. NDC moved with speedy efficiency.

As they moved out of the pointed stare of an ERCS guard, Shepard remarked lightly, "And I thought Councilor Velarn defined unfriendly."

"At least they're boarding us," Williams said with uncustomary optimism. "Do you think they'll have real pillows on the beds, or those weird disposable foam things?"

"I have no idea, Chief."

She sighed longingly. "I hope they're real."

Alenko admitted, "A hot bunk does get old pretty fast."

"Hey, you picked a frigate." There was an edge to her voice that she couldn't keep out despite the lighthearted attempt. She knew she was offering unwarranted coldness, and that he noticed and was bewildered by it, and for some reason that vastly irritated her. "Should've asked for a posting on a dreadnaught if you wanted a real bed."

He was startled by the unexpected jab. "Nothing exciting ever happens on a dreadnaught. And while I'm not complaining, this posting wasn't by request. I never met Anderson until he came to Mars to observe a few days of training, about two months in."

That puzzled her. "I thought Anderson picked most of the crew personally."

"Got me." Alenko shrugged. "I would've asked if I'd known about it."

_Stop it_, she told herself firmly as she felt another barb rise on her tongue. Try as she might, she had been entirely unable able to behave normally around him since that eavesdropped conversation, and her growing frustration at her own inability to counter it with cool professionalism had recently morphed into an unfair projection of blame. A clinical awareness of what was happening didn't do much to help her attitude, either, because that was simply more evidence of her irksome lack of self-control.

Williams looked between them and stuck her hands in her pockets, moving the subject along a tangent. "Sometimes I still can't believe I'm finally on a ship, let alone this ship."

"We don't have any shortage of excitement for anyone," Shepard made herself say.

Garrus grinned. "I served on three turian ships and they hardly saw as much action combined as you people go through in a month."

"We like to keep busy." Shepard glanced around. "Anyone see a highly ostentatious office? I need to talk to Anoleis. Sooner would be better."

It took some time to locate the office, which hid its entrance behind a discreet partition tucked into the corner of the building. Two hard-suit clad armed guards stood at attention on either side. They inspected her briefly but thoroughly as they passed, their beady turian eyes lingering on her sidearm.

Garrus eyed them right back. "The natives just keep getting friendlier."

"It's a lot of security for a place run this tight." The heavy guard presence bothered Shepard more than she let on. When NDC screened and disarmed their visitors so rigorously, there should be no need for heavy protection inside the facility. Of course, if they were open to giving bribes there was every chance they were open to receiving them as well. A comforting thought.

The four of them walked through a massive antechamber boasting several tables as well as extranet bubble viewers, spherical screens that would envelope the user with the content of their choice in near-complete privacy. Green and pink light danced beneath their white shells. Clerestory windows decorated the upper edge of the walls, though like every other port, they showed only the blizzard white-out. Shepard was impressed by the building's insulation. Even near the windows, the whistling winds were reduced to a bare whisper of sound.

What felt like a half kilometer later, they went around another partition and entered the foyer, which was nearly empty for being such a massive room. A prominent desk dominated the space with a single terminal resting on its surface. Behind it, Gianna Parasini was back at her post. She looked up as they approached. "Spectre. What can I do for you?"

"I need to see the administrator."

Parasini typed a few lines into her computer. "Certainly. I can schedule you for-"

"I'm sure he can spare a few minutes now," Shepard interrupted, not unpleasantly, but plainly indicating an appointment was not necessary. "Please tell him to expect me."

Parasini got a look at her face. "Of course. Right away, ma'am."

Shepard was already walking as the woman activated the intercom. To her credit, her tone was smooth, not at all frantic. "Mr. Anoleis? The spectre is here to see you."

Not Shepard, not Commander, just "the spectre". Shepard liked that. It was a title, indicating rank and authority in an absolute way, but devoid of personal interest. That was how it should be. All spectres should be equal stewards of the galaxy with the same professional aims, interchangeable with each other. "The specter is here to see you"- and nothing more needed to be said.

She could get used to that.

The glass doors parted at her approach, admitting her to a comparatively small office with a desk, several filing cabinets, a small side table, and a handful of chairs. A dour salarian man didn't cease scrolling through his terminal for more than a second to acknowledge their entrance, a single flick of his dark alien eyes.

Shepard addressed him directly. "Administrator Anoleis?"

"Every minute I waste talking to you costs the company twelve credits," he announced coldly. "This had better be important."

She skipped the preamble. "I'm here to research Saren Arterius' role in one of your client corporations, Binary Helix. I believe they have laboratory facilities on this planet."

"What makes you believe I would reveal such information, even if I had it?" He waved a hand dismissively. "Spectre Arterius sits on their executive board, as is public knowledge. And before you can ask, I don't know why he takes a special interest in their labs and I certainly don't know what Lady Benezia's business here is about. When stakeholders arrive to inspect their facilities, we don't tend to hinder them."

Shepard only just managed to keep her jaw from dropping open like a stranded fish. "Benezia is on Noveria? Now?"

She could tell from the flicker of recrimination that crossed his face that Anoleis was cursing his own assumption. His words were clipped and nasty. "Yes. She arrived four days ago, just ahead of the storm, along with several large crates and an entourage. They headed straight for the mountains and nobody has seen them since."

"Anything special about the crates?"

Anoleis twitched with irritation. "They passed weapons inspection. We had no reason to stop her taking them up to Binary Helix's hot labs."

She didn't any reaction to his aggrieved tone to manifest. "And this entourage?"

"What do you think?" He sniffed. "Highly trained asari biotics, likely commandos, attending to the protection of her person. Even you brought your own people with you."

"They're not my bodyguards," she said immediately, defensively. Behind her, she heard the distinct sound of Williams swallowing a laugh.

"I'm not bothered with who they are. Now, if you're quite finished wasting my time…?"

"Nearly." Shepard tapped her fingers against her hip. "Just tell me where I can catch a shuttle to this hot lab and I'll be out of your hair. Err… horns, as it were."

For the first time in the conversation, the salarian was off his guard. He blinked twice. "Are you blind? We're at the center of a Category Four Snow Event. The entire fleet's grounded. Even the roads into the Skadi Mountains are all but impassable."

"Alright, give me a ground transport then."

"As I said, the roads are unsuitable for travel. You may be a spectre, but even spectres bow to nature's fury. Be reasonable. Nobody can get in or out until the storm passes. I won't risk my personnel or equipment. You have to wait it out like everyone else."

"That's not good enough."

"With due respect, Commander Shepard, I don't care." He turned back to his terminal. "Now I must ask you to leave. Good day."

Shepard considered prolonging the argument, but didn't see the point. She didn't need to convince the Administrator to give her what she needed; he wasn't the one in direct, physical control of the vehicles. With a curt nod, she turned on her heel and vacated the office.

Her team of three had to hustle to keep up. Alenko asked, "What now, ma'am?"

She ignored him and touched her ear, activating her comm implant. "Shepard to _Normandy_. You there, Joker?"

"Ready and waiting, Commander."

"Can we take the ship into the mountains? Benezia's hiding out in a lab up there."

"Benezia's here? Right now? Holy crap. Talk about a lucky break."

"Focus, Joker."

"Yes, ma'am." He cleared his throat. There was a long pause while he checked his controls. "No can do, Commander. There's no room to land and the odds of dropping the mako in a ravine are about as good as hitting the road."

That was a disappointment, but she took it in stride. "Roger that. I'll find another way. Shepard out."

They made their way through the antechamber and back into the main facility. Shepard found a map holo, and started searching for the garage.

Garrus glanced around at the clusters of employees who were studiously avoiding taking any notice of them whatsoever. "Are we ready to confront Benezia? We still don't know what's going on, not really. The Conduit is a mystery, as is Saren's objective here."

Alenko seemed to be thinking along similar lines, though he chose his words carefully. "Commander, we should bring Liara into this. She helped us find this place, and she'd got an inside track."

Shepard stared at the wall, at the stone through the holographic projection. "I'd rather avoid it if I can."

Williams was confused. "Why's that, ma'am?"

Garrus added, "She might be able to get more out of Benezia than any of us could."

Shepard took a breath and turned to face them. "I don't suppose it's occurred to any of you that I might have to kill Benezia?"

None of them would meet her eyes. She sighed. "I don't care what Benezia's done or how bad their relationship is, nobody deserves to watch their friend murder their mother. I'm not doing that to Liara unless I have no other choice."

"Shiala snapped out of it," said Alenko uncertainly.

Shepard wasn't counting on it. She rubbed her nose. "I have a bad feeling about this."

He looked at her. "We're getting closer, and that's a good thing."

In a manner of speaking, he was right. In terms of whether Liara's loyalty or soundness of mind would hold past the sacrifice of her mother, if it came to that, Shepard was less certain. Shiala's explanation of an indoctrination process was compelling, but could it really bedazzle an accomplished biotic with the asari's particular bent for the mental arts and nearly a thousand years' experience, if Benezia didn't buy into Saren's philosophy on some level already? What if Benezia _was_ the indoctrination process, and had brainwashed all her followers to believe a crazy story about an alien ship possessed of telepathic powers? It made as much sense as anything else.

Williams peered at her. "Commander?"

She shoved her musing aside. "Come on. Garage is at the other end of the building."

They wound their way down a long concrete hallway, the air growing cooler by degrees, until they arrived in a low-ceilinged room capped by automatic glass doors sealing off the shuttle hangar from the rest of the facility, opening automatically at their approach. The place was nearly abandoned, only a few technicians on the floor. One of them, a turian, wiped his hands on his oil-stained coveralls and came over to greet them. "Hey, folks. Visitors aren't really allowed in here."

Shepard continued examining the hangar and vehicle selection. Security was tight. The garage doors leading to the planetary surface were thick, and activated by both card readers and biometric scanners. At a guess, the cards were likely issued to all personnel with surface excursion permissions, while the scanners were a tandem system requiring a member of the garage staff, maybe this turian. It's how she would have set things up, were she as concerned about access control as Anoleis. They could hack through- maybe- but it wouldn't be simple.

Garrus gestured towards her. "I don't think Shepard understands rules very well. Maybe you can explain it to her."

He gave her a closer look. "You're that spectre that's got management running around like a bunch of headless chickens."

She offered him a smile. "Glad to see the Alliance Navy aren't the only ones to still see some value in Mako tanks in a world of shuttle craft, though I'm curious why a research collective needs all that artillery."

His mandibles flared slightly, and he stuck his hands in his pockets. "You can't be too careful. Noveria's native wildlife is a whole other kind of tough."

Shepard chuckled. "This your garage?"

"I'm the chief mechanic, so I guess that makes it mine, sure." He held out his hand. "Call me Li. Humans have a hard time with my full name."

"Shepard," she said, accepting the handshake. "My dad was deck chief on a carrier, before he retired. Spent half his life fixing birds."

"And anything else that breaks, if his job was anything like mine." His laugh came from his belly, warm and genuine, and he tilted his head in inquiry. "How do you like the Mako?"

"The balance could be better," she replied honestly. "They're jouncy. Stiffen up the shock absorbers and put some teeth in the accelerator."

"You'd sacrifice fall survivability."

"A little, sure, but you'd have a tank that was more evasive and didn't jump two meters in the middle of a shot because you rolled over a little bump. The trade-off would be a net improvement." She paused. "And if you're really worried about crush damage, extend the dampening field dynamically. The thing's got more juice than it knows what to do with anyway."

Li stared. He wasn't the only one- most of her squad was likewise startled. Her mouth quirked. He pointed. "You, I like. I may not agree but you're not stupid-wrong. What brings you to my hangar?"

Shepard turned towards him and uncrossed her arms. "I need to get to Binary Helix's lab, as soon as possible. I hoped you could help me out."

"I'm sorry to say I can't." His regret was immediate, and authentic. "Every garage pass is monitored and closely tracked. Port Hanshan's closed due to the storm. I'd lose my job."

"Is it the blizzard, or Anoleis?" she asked dryly.

He was quiet a long moment. At last, he said, "It's true that the shuttles were grounded before you got here, but it's also true that the Administrator could've made an exception on the Makos if he liked. Sorry, Shepard. I wish there were something I could do."

"Your hands are tied. I wouldn't ask you to risk your job." She made to leave. "Thank you, though."

"Wait." He ambled closer, lowering his voice. "It's not much, but not for nothing, Synthetic Insights is in a bit of a jam over Anoleis' little fees. They've got garage privileges to access their labs, next mountain over from Binary Helix's."

"Tit for tat?"

"Don't let the snobbishness fool you. Everything on Noveria's for sale, right down to their fancy shoes."

"I see." She looked him over. "Good meeting you, Li."

"It was an honor." He shook her hand a second time, and returned to his work.

"What now, ma'am?" Williams asked as they returned to the warmth of the main facility.

"I don't know." Shepard raked her hair back from her face and blew out a breath. They had a dire shortage of leverage. Briefly, she considered simply stealing a pass, but for all she knew they were required to operate the vehicles as well as depart. Getting stranded halfway up a mountain when Anoleis deactivated the stolen card seemed the world's worst scenario. "Any idea when this storm will pass?"

Alenko tapped a query into his omni-tool. "Not for a week at the inside."

"I'm not sitting on my ass for a week while Benezia delivers whatever Binary Helix developed for Saren."

Garrus rested his chin in his hand. "Can we wait for her to come back through the station? NDC won't like it if we pick a fight on their turf, but I'm prepared to live with it."

Shepard though it over. "No. ERCS would be on their side so we'd be greatly outnumbered. That's not insurmountable, but I'd prefer to limit casualties. And Benezia might decide to chance the weather and take a shuttle directly to orbit whenever her pick-up arrives." She switched tactics. "Did you or Liara uncover anything about Binary Helix's work?"

"For Saren specifically? Not much. All I found was a number of high-value transactions flowing from his pockets into theirs."

"That's our next angle, then," she decided. "We'll keep working the transport problem and try to figure out makes a turian with a synthetic army buy out a voting stake in a genetics firm."

"How?"

"We split up and start asking questions. We'll cover more ground that way, and there may be a few people who'd rather talk to you than me, given how my face got plastered all over their email." Shepard wasn't overly concerned. It put her in a good place for a hard sell on transport while her team worked out a softer angle on intel. "Garrus, let's see some old-fashioned detective work. Talk to anyone who looks interesting. Williams, try to chat up the guards. They're not friendly but you should have enough in common to get them going. Alenko, you're on electronics. There has to be a hundred public terminals in this place. Maybe somebody left tracks."

There was a round of agreement. She nodded approvingly. "Let me know if you find anything. Otherwise, we'll meet up at evening mess."

Williams saluted and took off, Garrus not far behind her. Alenko crossed his arms and waited.

She didn't look at him, instead pulling up a dossier on her omni-tool. "Did I stutter, lieutenant?"

"No, ma'am," he replied evenly. "Permission to ask a question?"

Shepard gave him a level stare. "Shoot."

"What is up with you the last couple days?" He didn't bother to curb the bluntness. "You've been chewing my ass for no damn reason and that's not like you."

"Sorry if my lack of sugarcoating upset your delicate sensibilities," she shot back before she could stop herself. She was vaguely horrified.

Alenko folded his arms. "I'm not angry. I'm worried about you. Or is that off-limits now too?"

The last sentence was not so much a thrown knife as a gentle shove back by a friend who'd had enough. A warning gesture rather than an attack. She almost would have preferred a straight-up assault- a fight was at least familiar ground. Shepard ran a hand over her face. "I'm sorry. I'm just… tired and anxious, that's all."

The half-lie left her tongue like slime. The truth was, while people claimed not to like excuses, most did appreciate explanations, a chance to rationalize and judge poor choices. But what else was she supposed to tell him? That some cheap scuttlebutt got under her skin, and while she knew it was impossible regardless of whether it was accurate, at the same time she liked the thought too much to bring up directly? It was so pathetic she could feel her brain cringing away from her skull.

The silence stretched just long enough for her to start to worry he wouldn't buy it, but then his expression smoothed and he nodded. "Ok. If there's something I can do to help…"

She forced a smile. "You can figure out if any of Binary Helix's employees left useful data on those terminals."

He saluted. "Aye aye, ma'am."

Shepard watched him go, and then spent a minute systematically putting it from her mind before turning her feet towards the facility's small commercial area.

Noveria's client corporations were good about supplying their employees stationed on the ground with material wants and needs. There was a fully-staffed mess, uniforms for the less senior staff, housing and extranet access. But they couldn't anticipate everything, and so a few sundry shops and other businesses survived at the north end of the main facility. Shepard hoped to find some kind of piddling tour company, for escorting visiting investors and employee family members around the site. Such a company would either have its own transports or direct access to NDC's, and possibly be more susceptible to her kind of influence.

She paused to read the sign outside one establishment, an import/export business, and was about to turn away disappointed when a voice beckoned her inside. "You are the spectre that visits Port Hanshan?"

It was possessed of strange overtones, harmonies, as if more than one person spoke. Shepard leaned to the side to look in the door. An pink ovoid limbed in a pearly blue, about the size of a medium dog, floated about 220 centimeters from the floor. Pudgy spines decorated its back and six long, delicate tentacles trailed towards the floor. Though it had no obvious mouth the words came quite clearly. It oriented itself towards her with something like expectation.

Her eyebrows rose. A hanar. They weren't exactly uncommon throughout the galaxy, but this was the first to make her personal acquaintance. "News travels fast."

"Indeed, esteemed spectre." It bobbed slightly. "Your arrival was not greeted with any joy, yet this one is pleased to make your acquaintance."

That immediately put her on her guard. Li's warning about the fickle nature of Novaria's inhabitants resounded in her mind. Cautiously, she asked, "And why is that?"

It turned sideways, just enough to welcome her in, and she took the hint. Inside the shop was drab, accentuated only by a terminal with a non-standard interface she guessed accommodated the hanar's unique physiology, and a few posters advertising its services.

"This one is called Opold," it continued, drifting behind the counter. "There is a burden you could ease. This one is known as a merchant, and could compensate you handsomely."

"My services aren't for sale." She wondered if recording the message to play automatically from her omni-tool in response to particularly inquiries would save her any time.

"This one does not ask much," the hanar amended hastily. "There is a special item this one has procured for a customer, not permitted within the facility. But a spectre's baggage is not subjected to scrutiny. You could carry it through customs."

"You want to hire a spectre as a trafficking mule." Her disbelief was palpable.

"That… is not inaccurate, but the situation is not so simple. This one's customer is impatient and prone to violence."

"You should have thought of that before agreeing to the transaction."

"This one admits to unsound reasoning. The original carrier was discovered before receiving this one's merchandise."

Shepard was about to decline and take her leave, when a thought gave her pause. Her mission required both leverage for transportation and more information about Binary Helix's research activities. Depending on the nature of the cargo, it could give her one or both. "I'm not getting in five leagues of your 'special item' without knowing what it is."

The hanar clearly didn't like that. Its tentacles drew up a few centimeters, closer to its body. "This one must be discreet. Rest assured, the contents pose no threat to anyone within Port Hanshan."

She somehow doubted that, but she could check for herself once she had it in hand. "And your customer…?"

"…prefers to remain anonymous."

"He'd prefer to have his package. And it sounds like the only way that's going to happen is through me. So start talking."

Its ogive snout wriggled with discomfort. After a moment of staring her down, it yielded. "The customer is the krogan Inamorda, a bounty hunter of some repute. That one grows restless from the delay."

Now she was certain that whatever the nature of the item, was banned from the premises with good reason. "Where do I pick up the package?"

Opold sagged with relief. "It will be delivered to your vessel within the day. All you need do is deliver it to this one."

"Simple enough."

"This one offers humble thanks to the spectre."

_Don't thank me yet,_ she thought, but offered only a reassuring smile. "I should be going before anyone sees us together."

"Of course." Opold bobbed again, and Shepard left the shop.

She located a bench near a particularly attractive waterfall feature and popped open her omni-tool. She dashed off a quick message to the _Normandy_, telling them to expect a package of some kind and requesting any further information they could get on Opold. Her gut said it was as simple as the hanar stated, but there was no harm in checking.

After that, she started pulling files on Synthetic Insights. She didn't care if she had to hotwire some unfortunate CEO's company car- she was getting to that lab. The corporation had made the news with some frequency in the weeks following Eden Prime. As a licensed developer of AI technology, one of only ten in the whole of Council space, the Alliance had contracted their services analyzing geth casualties for exploitable weaknesses. They'd also received several human bodies for study who had died of injuries inflicted by the synthetics, mostly from the 212.

Chief Williams was apoplectic when she heard. Shepard found the research incredibly distasteful, but just because she had a microphone at her disposal didn't mean it was appropriate to get involved. One of the most frustrating and difficult parts of being a spectre was knowing when to make use of her authority and when to fume in silence. Alliance R&D didn't want her telling them how to best develop tools to defend the Alliance any more than she wanted them telling her how best to deploy them on a live mission.

Regarding Synthetic Insight's involvement on Noveria or with the NDC, there was less information. They were not members of NDC's executive board, though they did maintain extensive laboratories in the mountains, listed under their assets. Finding a member of their executive staff responsible for this holding was more complicated. They proudly listed several leading scientists lured away from academia or other corporations to head their research efforts, but they wouldn't have what Shepard needed.

Briefly, she contemplated whether it was possible and worthwhile to drive her own Mako up the docking tube and through the lobby, before recalling the problem of the elevator. But sure there would be a larger service elevator somewhere in the docks…

"Synthetic Insights?" said a voice behind her, light and airy. "And you've not even been on Noveria a day. I'm impressed."

Shepard turned slightly and saw Anoleis' secretary, her hands folded neatly against the front of that ridiculously pink dress. Not a hair was out of place and the same mild, pleasant smile was fixed on her face. "Ms. Parasini."

The woman gestured towards the bench. "Could we chat for a few minutes?"

The commander shut her omni-tool and inclined her head, waiting. Parasini sat, smoothing her skirt beneath her in one sleek gesture, and spent a few seconds studying the waterfall. "You know, you're very different from how you seem on the news vids."

"How do I seem?" Shepard asked dryly, with satisfying cynicism.

"Harder. More belligerent. Navy through-and-through." She leaned forward almost conspiratorially. "You talk about duty an awful lot."

Did she? She was hardly fixated... Shepard sidestepped the issue and chose a vapid response. "Did you think marines do this for the pay?"

"Of course not. However, I admit I didn't expect you to adapt well to the realities of Noveria." She smiled. "And one doesn't exactly picture a spectre salivating at the thought of a long, hot bath."

Shepard refused to be made self-conscious. "I know, right? Of the plethora of available vices, I'm drawn to something that mundane? Doesn't seem quite sexy enough for the role."

"It's one of my duties to make all our important guests feel at home. Believe me, I'd rather deal with the ones who want something simple. We had an asari executive come through last month who expected us to supply her Hallex habit for the duration of her stay. It was a nightmare."

"But that's not your real job."

"No," Parasini agreed. "My job is to keep my boss happy and his office running smoothly. Your surprise visit creates challenges for both tasks. Anyone with direct access to the Council, not to mention the powers-that-be within the Alliance, can make life very difficult for my employer. I would've done my best to accommodate anything you asked. But you didn't want to negotiate or you'd hardly have settled for so little."

Shepard cut the crap. "I came here for information vital to ending the attacks on colonies within the Attican Traverse. That benefits your employer regardless of whether they choose to acknowledge it. I do what I have to in order to get the things I need, and beyond that, I'm not interested in corporate games. I suspect there are more than a few activities on this rock that would make me sick, but I'm not going out of my way to find them, and you should take that as a courtesy."

"We do. I came to you in the interests of giving you something you do want in hopes of fostering a benevolent relationship between our organizations while you are here." Her smooth, practiced tone never wavered.

"And what is that?" she asked with some suspicion.

"A name." She withdrew a small datapad from a pocket and cued up a picture of a well-dressed turian man. "Lorik Qui'in."

She committed the face to memory. "Who is he?"

"The head manager-in-residence overseeing Synthetic Insights' operation. S.I., as you clearly know, is in the midst of a quarrel with NDC that's become unpleasant for Qui'in. He needs someone to bring the issue to closure. As it happens, you may have the proper talents." Parasini slipped the datapad away. "His offices are closed pending investigation, but in the evenings you can find him in the hotel bar."

Shepard tucked the piece of information away. "I still don't like your motives, but thank you."

To her surprise, Parasini laughed. "No, thank you, spectre. Your bluntness is… refreshing."

And with that, the secretary stood, smoothing her dress, and departed.

/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\

Shepard was moving into her second hour of waiting for Lorik Qui'in, getting evil looks from the bartender for taking up a table while nursing a single cherry cola. A half-hearted preliminary report for Anderson lay open on her cantankerous datapad. With juvenile insolence, she tapped the field reserved for the mission summary, typed, _Noveria confirmed as a corporate hellhole. Send ice cream and C4, _and passed several pleasant minutes amusing herself by imagining the look on her face if she submitted the report as-is.

The bar was growing crowded as the evening wore on. The staff assigned to NDC's headquarters were mainly human and asari, though there was the occasional salarian, turian, or odder species. An elcor took up station in the far corner, as dour-faced as all his species, and downed drinks methodically as various business contacts came and went from his table. The asari seemed as social in business as they were in politics, keeping to groups of two and three, chatting lively and earnestly with one another. The robust economy of asari-controlled space came almost entirely from brokering trade, testimony to the broad applicability of their strength in diplomacy. In contrast the humans were uptight, frenetic, or even paranoid, as they fussed with their food and pushed agendas in the same breath as anxieties. Two tables over, a woman worried that a company car, lodging, subsidized entertainment and a salary exceeding a small colonial economy wasn't sufficient to transfer positions, and Shepard listened, open-mouthed, as her male companion sympathetically justified her crippling fear of change.

Somehow, the overheard conversation put Noveria into crisp perspective. It was an anthill of people ruled by fear- fear of underperforming, of missed deadlines, missed opportunities, disappointment. The atmosphere in Port Hanshan was not one of enterprising spirit but the collective paranoia of a few hundred people jockeying for position so they wouldn't have to live with failure. Shepard understood failure, but she couldn't imagine being so afraid of her own potential that she fought to remain standing still.

She checked the time. Still no sign of Qui'in. She was on the verge of calling Synthetic Insight's desk to get his contact information, not caring if it tipped her hand, when Alenko entered the bar and crossed the room to her table.

"Lieutenant," she said, with some surprise. She radioed _Normandy _to let them know she had a meeting to attend at the hotel and she might miss her team's scheduled rendezvous.

"Joker said you managed to get yourself exiled over here," he explained before she could ask.

"Maybe for nothing," she sighed. "The person I was trying to meet hasn't shown up yet." In truth, she was starting to wonder if Parasini's tip was a set-up to either waste her time or fix her location while they worked some other kind of mischief.

He waited a few seconds for her to continue, before glancing over his shoulder at the bank of elevators leading to the hotel. "I was just on my way upstairs and saw you here, and just thought I'd stop and see how it was going."

Her brain was lost in plotting reprisal if the secretary was having her on and caught the awkward excuse belatedly, a touch chagrined. "You want to sit awhile? I'm bored to tears waiting."

Alenko accepted the invitation, setting a brown paper bag emblazoned with the log of the hotel coffee shop on the table and glancing inadvertently at her datapad. "You know, we have ordnance on the ship if you want to blow the facility. We could set up the charges along the window. All that fire, whirling snow, and falling glass would make a hell of a show."

Shepard smiled at that, savoring the image for a few long moments, before changing the subject. "Does Liara know about her mother yet?"

"Ash told her when we got back to the ship."

Damn it. "I meant to call her myself, but then I got caught up in things here…"

"She took it… graciously. Liara puts up a good front but I think she's more than a little uneasy. She said thank you and took her food down to the lab."

"Still think it's a good idea to drag her into this?" she asked, unable to help herself.

"Yes," he answered without hesitation, surprising her. "You're right that the situation could get ugly. But there's no way it won't be rough, and it's harder to be helpless. You can't protect her from it so at least allow her some say in how it goes down."

Protests that she wasn't trying to protect Liara from anything immediately rose to her lips, and died there as Shepard realized that was exactly what she wanted to do. Of all of them, Liara was the one who never asked to be involved. The demure asari scientist never signed up for a life like this, and she was exactly the kind of person Shepard promised to safeguard when she took her oath of service. Putting Liara in the way of disaster ran counter to every instinct she had.

"She doesn't deserve this," she said, aware the sentiment was as insipid as it was empty.

There wasn't anything to say to that. Alenko glanced down at the table, fidgeting with the paper bag.

Shepard picked up her cola, by now tepid, and grimaced faintly as she sipped. "You should go ahead and eat that. I don't mind."

"Oh." He looked from the bag to her and reached in, removing a pink-frosted cupcake in a polka-dot wrapper. "It's not for… I know it's a few days late, but we've been stuck on the ship, so… happy birthday."

He leaned across the table and set the pastry in front of her.

She stared at the cupcake, not disliking it but not sure what to say either. It came to her then that it had been so long since she attempted a relationship built on things like remembering birthdays rather than casually hooking up that she no longer had any idea how to behave. It was a good feeling, foreign but warm. The kind of remembering where he could, unprompted, see a cupcake in a display case and connect it with wanting a way to cheer her up, which was what she was sure had occurred- he'd said birthday more in the way of an excuse than a purpose. After how prickly she'd been she could hardly blame him for avoiding the subject. Perhaps it shouldn't have been much of a goalpost but historically Shepard found such consideration was often too much to ask, and coupled with everything else that was going on, downright astonishing.

She gave the pastry a quarter turn to disguise her reaction and buy a little time, and said, "Staying alive another year isn't much of an accomplishment."

"Maybe not for most people, but I know you now." Alenko folded his arms on the table and shrugged. "With you, quarterly might be a more appropriate interval for celebration."

It was surprising, too, that he could make a joke like that about the insane level of risk she undertook, instead of initiating a serious conversation leading to ultimatums and possibly hysterics weeks or months down the line, and she _really _liked that. She peeled the wrapper off the cupcake and pulled a chunk away with her fingers. It was end-of-the-day stale and tasted strongly of artificial strawberry. She'd never tell. "I don't normally advertise my birthday. It kind of ends up feeling like a command performance if I mention it-"

"Is it really that hard for you to say thank you and eat your damned cake?" he teased.

"Screw you." Shepard took another bite. "And thank you too, I guess."

He sat back, pleased, and looked around the bar. "So your contact is a complete no-show?"

She copied his glance and instantly spotted Qui'in settled in a private booth. He must have walked in while she was preoccupied contemplating the many interpretations of pastry exchange. "No, he's right there." Shepard nodded at the booth. "I need to speak with him privately. I'll see you tomorrow."

"Yes, ma'am." Alenko slid out of the chair. "Some advice, if you'll take it- once you're done, try to get some sleep. You're hell without it."

"Very funny, lieutenant."

"Goodnight, ma'am." He ambled towards the elevators, and Shepard moved towards the booth.

Qui'in was staring listlessly at a drinks menu with the look of a man who'd memorized it long ago, but had nothing more interesting to occupy his attention. She slipped into the booth without bothering to ask permission and steepled her hands on the tabletop.

He took it in stride. If he found her forward approach off-putting, it didn't show. "Good evening. What can I do for you?"

"I think we might be able to help each other."

"How could an old turian like me be of any possible use to a Council spectre?" But he rubbed his hands together and leaned forward, his beady eyes intent.

Shepard laid it out swiftly. "I know Synthetic Insights has been butting heads with Anoleis' office. I also know that S.I. holds a garage pass to get to the mountains. Anoleis is withholding my permissions on account of the weather, but I think we both know that's merely an excuse."

"Yes, he would be disinclined to let you wander. There's a lot of work in the labs we're keen to keep away from prying eyes." The turian's mild purr of a voice was very dry. "'Butting heads' is one of your charming human idioms, I take it. Mr. Anoleis has shut my office in order to investigate claims of my supposed corruption."

"On what grounds?"

"My company pays a premium for offices and laboratories on this planet. I objected to an additional… surcharge. Our salarian friend has become quite wealthy since his office took direct control of rent collection."

The picture was all too clear. "You called him on his extortion, and this is retribution."

"Indeed. He'll throw me out if he can, but really, he wants the hard evidence I collected on his kickbacks, and for that, he needed an excuse to ransack my office." He paused, mandibles hugging his face briefly. "I doubt he's found it yet, because his off-the-books goods continue to search the premises with no signs of abatement."

"Off-the-books? These are Anoleis' personal hires?"

"Naturally, the administrator has no desire for ERCS or any other official authority to become aware of his activities, though they are mostly comprised of security team members trying to earn a little cash on the side. Captain Kimura, unfortunately, is unaware of their moonlighting."

Shepard connected the dots in her head. This was exactly the kind of leverage she needed. With that evidence, she could acquire transportation through Qui'in, or through Anoleis via blackmail if the turian reneged. The administrator was charged with protecting the interests of the executive board, but against the wall, he'd save his own skin preferentially. "If I get your evidence before they find it, you'll give me your pass?"

Qui'in nodded and reached into a pocket. "The data is hidden under several layers of encryption and misdirection on my personal terminal. However, I've written a script that will copy it to this OSD automatically. Take it."

She closed her hand around the device. "Where do I go?"

"The more important question is when. NDC holds electronic master keys to all of the offices within this facility. Since seizing our premises, they have invoked their control in order to seal the 'crime scene', as it were. Unless you're carrying state-of-the-art encryption hacks, I would recommend waiting until tomorrow morning, when the guards open the office to continue their search."

"Won't that bring me into direct contact with Anoleis' thugs?" She wasn't worried about the outcome of any such encounter, but Qui'in's lack of concern for discretion startled her.

He waved a hand. "If you go early, when they're just getting started, there shouldn't be too many. If you're clever, you might even be able to convince them to take a walk for long enough to get the data and leave."

She thought it over, and nodded. The terms were acceptable. "Alright. I'll meet you here tomorrow evening to make the exchange."

She rose from the table. His eyes followed her. "Oh, and one more thing, spectre."

Shepard waited patiently for him to elaborate. A flicker of amusement crossed his face. "Pull this off, and there'll be more in it for you than a garage pass."

"I'm paid for my work, Mr. Qui'in. I don't need your money."

"Consider it a personal donation towards the war effort, then." There was no mistaking it; Qui'in was highly entertained, though by her perceived naivety or puritanical denouncement was difficult to discern. "Synthetic Insights greatly values the human market. Your kind are technology junkies second to none."

"Right." She snorted and turned to go.

As she was walking away, he called after her. "And do try to keep bloodstains off the carpets? Brand new just last summer."

Shepard took the elevator directly to her hotel room, on the fourth floor of the complex. It was well-appointed, with a bed large enough to make a krogan feel at home; a small sitting area equipped with a couch, coffee table, and loveseat; broad desk; and a bathroom the size of Shepard's entire cabin back on the _Normandy_. The whole thing was done up in white accentuated with soft grays and the occasional burst of sky blue, making the room seem as chilly as Noveria's outdoor surface.

It was the porcelain-tiled bathroom that commanded Shepard's attention as she locked the door behind her. Impatiently, she swept the room for bugs using a program Tali loaded onto her omni-tool and was somewhat relieved to only find two. They were tucked inside a makeshift envelope constructed from the provided hotel stationary and dropped unceremoniously in the hall outside.

She shed clothing with a similar lack of care from the doorway to the bathroom, leaving a trail of her sad collection of civilian gear, and turned the tap. Hot water gushed into the tub on a cloud of steam. On a whim, she upended the tiny bottle of shampoo into the stream, a poor woman's bubble bath, and stepped outside the bathroom to check her messages while it filled.

There were two from the _Normandy. _The first concerned a request from some of the remaining crew to come ashore, while the second was slightly more interesting. Setting the omni-tool to audio only, she linked to the ship, and got Joker. "What's this about a lead box?"

"That package you wanted us to keep a look out for? Well, it got here. And it's in a briefcase lined with lead."

That could mean anything from Opold not wanting anyone to see what was inside, to the transportation of radioactive material. Her brow furrowed. "What's in it?"

"Don't know. It's locked and nobody wanted to try to open it without orders."

"Good job. Leave it like it is for the moment, and have one of the crew bring it over in the morning when they come ashore."

"Tali, Liara, and Wrex all want to go."

"Yeah, I got a message to that effect." More like a message whining bitterly about being left behind after being cooped up aboard ship for several weeks. She could sympathize.

"Tali also said she needs to update you on a special assignment." Joker didn't bother to disguise his curiosity.

Shepard kept her tone neutral. "She can brief me tomorrow. Was there anything else?"

"Not on this end, Commander."

"That's it for today, then. Shepard out." She closed down her omni-tool and found the bath was almost full.

Climbing in was like a week of shore leave hitting her all at once. The water was just shy of scalding, the perfect temperature, and she slid down until her nose was barely above the waterline while her hair floated on the surface all around her. Shepard closed her eyes and let out a long breath. For the better part of the first fifteen minutes she simply sat there quietly, mind blissfully blank, feeling the heat soak into every new bruise, cut, and abrasion her body had accumulated over the last few months, as well as the older injuries that never completely healed like new. Her body had been through ten years of demanding physical fitness countered by utter mistreatment at the hands of her work, and it didn't so much show as feel, some days, in occasional stiffness and fits of achiness. If it felt like this at twenty-nine, she very much doubted she'd thank herself at fifty, but for now, the water helped.

Inescapably, however, the day's problems slowly intruded on her momentary meditation. Shepard could never just let herself be for very long; it wasn't in her nature. And the problem that rose right to the top of her brain came in the shape of her handsome staff lieutenant.

To say she wasn't good at relationships was an understatement, and hardly limited to romance. Even most of her friendships centered around work, because it was difficult to maintain a friendship without a basic shared understanding of its demands, much less anything more. She leaned her head back until it rested on the lip of the tub and stared at the ceiling with its recessed lighting. With the shower curtain drawn to maintain the temperature, the space glowed a faint rosy orange, as if she were sitting inside an apricot. If she was being especially honest, she thought, it had also been a long time since she gave the matter more than a few moments' consideration.

The fight, the last one, rose unbidden. It'd been years since she'd heard her erstwhile ex-fiance Todd's voice in her head. Compartmentalization was good for more than battlefield memories. But now it crawled out of its locked drawer and sprang at her like an asp.

_"This isn't a relationship. This is an affair. And just like the cheating husband's never going to leave his wife, you're never going to stop giving the best part of your love and attention to the goddamned navy. Even if it kills you. Fuck, you'll go down with a smile on your face. It's what you want- "last full measure of devotion" and the rest of the good soldier crap. Do you have any idea how screwed up that is?"_

Shepard put her hand to her mouth, the water swishing quietly against her arm.

_"Nobody in his right mind would love you when it's like that."_

She'd hit him. She wasn't proud of it, but it was that or weep all the water from her body, and the last shreds of her pride wouldn't allow him the satisfaction. So she busted his lip and watched him wipe away the blood, shake his head in disgust, and walk out.

The subsequent years brought clarity to the messy end of that relationship, and Shepard had learned a few things. Firstly, that Todd was a genuine asshole and this would not have changed even if her job were less risky or her dedication less severe, and it was a benefit to her life that they never married. But neither was he entirely full of shit. Somewhere along the line, between bruises and bullet holes and leaving in the middle of the night, not to be heard from for days or weeks, her various partners had each inevitably realized that these incidents were not exceptions from an otherwise normal life. Todd's mistake was in telling her that love was the problem, when what she heard far more often was that love just wasn't sufficient to bear through that.

So she reduced the scope of her expectations for romantic company to the sating of basic urges and called it enough, when it had never been anything like enough, but at least it was uncomplicated. Both parties knew exactly what to expect and that was refreshing. Shepard was a strong believer in the axiom that personal was not the same as important. On any objective scale, she filled a vital role in galactic security and performing it well far outweighed a satisfying private life. She didn't need affection or companionship to survive and eventually she realized the heartache of trying in the face of certain failure was equally unnecessary.

Crossing over into Alliance territory at the end of the harrowing mission to batarian space burned almost painfully in her mind. Steeling herself with the story they prepared regarding their survival, sure in the knowledge that she was protecting her crew from the kind of psychological scrutiny that could end careers. Laine standing passive sixty centimeter to her left, her skin almost physically crawling in his presence as she spoke the words that kept him from the brig as surely as it kept the rest of them from becoming desk jockeys. Answering the navy doctors' coldly clinical questions in the days that followed and realizing that even if the others could live with it, she couldn't, and it was too late. Lying awake in the nights that came after wishing so badly that she had one person in her life who understood enough to tell her she still had decency and mean it.

Akuze was something that happened to her. Elysium, getting shot in the back, even downloading a Prothean nightmare on Eden Prime were all events beyond her control. Losing the drive core to a lucky AA strike on that mission wasn't any different. She could deal with that. But what followed was a choice, actions for which she was solely accountable, and that was much harder to swallow. She's made survival into her only goal, and survival was simply not an adequate rationale to explain everything. People did more than survive. They _lived_.

In the humid seclusion of the bathroom she could admit to herself that she was procrastinating. Once she knew the truth of Ash's gossip, she would face either a professional duty to shut it down, or the depressing reality of false hope, and she was subconsciously putting off that moment as long as humanly possible. Maybe part of her was lashing out at him in a hope that he would retract any attraction before she was forced to reject it herself. Then she could lie blamelessly that it either never happened or could never have worked, instead of admitting she was too cowardly to give that particular horse another try after being tossed to the dirt so many times.

The regulation didn't bother her. She could use it as another paper shield against her trepidation, if she liked, but Shepard had yet to meet a regulation she could not circumvent given sufficient motivation. It was possible Alenko cared, though. He was much more by-the-book.

More worrisome was the reason for Article 218. Their mission was critical to the future of the Alliance, maybe the entire galaxy. Shepard could not afford distractions. The best thing to do was raise the subject, and politely, firmly, indicate lack of interest.

The cloying berry taste of the cupcake's frosting still clung to her mouth like a promise and she knew she wasn't going to do that. Where did that leave her?

No expectations, she decided. She couldn't ignore the possibility and so she needed to stop trying. But she also needed to stop naval-gazing, extrapolating, playing games in her head, and permit herself to be ok with whatever happened. Stop wondering which way to steer the ship and just let it drift. Letting go of control didn't come naturally but she was smart enough to realize it was the only way she could maintain focus where it mattered- on her mission. If he had a bee in his head about her, that was his problem, and if she enjoyed his company and friendship or even simply his attention, there was nothing wrong with that. She was allowed a little humanity, too.

Shepard rose, dripping, from the tub and wrapped one of the hotels puffy towels about herself. The thing was the size of a small blanket and nearly as thick. She would have wrapped her hair in one as well if there was any chance of its bulk staying on her head. The maid service had left _three_ of these casual monstrosities, along with a dressing gown and slippers made of the same. The items fit perfectly. Shepard didn't even want to know how.

A few minutes passed while she played with the vid terminal. 300 premium vid sites and nothing caught her interest. The news was similarly disinteresting. Udina gave another speech. Hackett ordered the Fifth Fleet to high alert along high-traffic relay corridors. The turians were increasing patrols along their own borders, clearly wary of the unrest in the Traverse even if they were unwilling to publicly admit it. ANN did a very nice profile on one of the dead marines from Eden Prime, and Shepard stopped channel surfing to watch a few minutes of the segment before her cynicism got the best of her and she clicked the unit off.

She sat cross-legged on the bed and chewed her lip. Then she popped open her omni-tool and found Alenko's ID on its message system. There was nothing strange about it, she told herself; they talked late at night all the time. _You still awake?_

_You should be sleeping, _came the stern admonition, a few seconds later.

_My hair's dripping wet, _she complained.

_So throw one of these magic towels over the pillow, _he wrote. _I think the navy could build tents out of them._

_Might be good camouflage for snow-bound iceballs like Noveria._

_But probably not as cheap as insulated tarp. _There was a pause in the exchange. _I should be enjoying this- how many times do you get to stay in a thousand-credits-a-night hotel on someone else's dime? But I just feel restless._

_Is it trying to sleep in a bed larger than a coffin, or the not doing any work for a few hours altogether?_

He was a few minutes in replying. _Both._

_When this is over, we'll have to see about making up for wasted nights in nice hotels. _Shepard sent it before she realized how it could look. Her face burned.

He sent her back an emoticon indicating laughter. She thought about clarifying her statement- she only meant that by the time this was over, they'd all have earned a little pampering- before deciding that would only make things worse.

_I wish I hadn't left my book on the ship, _she replied at last, lamely.

_Shepard?_

_What?_

_Go to sleep. _

She could picture him shaking his head and smiling. Her eyes rolled at the omni-tool's holographic screen. Then she shut it down, ordered the VI to shut the lights, and tried her best to follow his admonition.


	35. Chapter 35

_**((AN- Sorry for the longer interval between chapters lately. These last few have been about twice average length and so it's taken longer to get to a point where I'm happy with them. Hopefully once they're off Noveria things should settle back down!))**_

It was 0423 hours when Shepard realized the blinking orange light and awful racket suffusing the room was not going away. In the bleary way of the half-asleep, she fumbled for the omni-tool alarm and squinted at the time. Then she reached further, for the nightstand, and checked it on her datapad as well.

"Oh, hell," she muttered, forcing herself to a sitting position in the dark of the room and rubbing at her eyes. It'd been years since she slept through an alarm. It was this damned bed, soft and huge and warm, and this absolutely quiet room, and the aftereffects of a hot bath that reduced her muscles to pleasant jelly.

The towel was still more-or-less wrapped around her. Shepard cued the lights and padded to the restroom. So much for a morning run. The hotel boasted an excellent gym, but she'd wasted her spare half hour on extra shut-eye.

As she woke up a little more, she could grudgingly admit that the tradeoff seemed worthwhile; she was well-rested, for maybe the first time in weeks. If her nightmares came knocking, they left no footprints. The bath had worked wonders for her accumulation of minor injuries. As she brushed her teeth and washed her face, she felt… relaxed. Ready. With luck, the air of easy tranquility might survive past breakfast.

Shepard checked in with her ship as she dragged a brush through her hair and began to braid it. The comm officer's voice was slurred with sleep. "This is _Normandy. _Nothing to report, Commander. Noveria Docking Control affirmed our entry request for the remainder of the shore party."

"Are they on their way?"

"You should have eyes on them by 0630, ma'am."

She terminated the call. The first hour of the morning passed in a steady flurry of ship logs, status updates, and approval forms. Shepard plowed through an electronic stack of duty rosters and requisitions from Pressly. Port Hanshan's fuel prices were nothing short of highway robbery, but these days the _Normandy _had an expense account to match. It was disconcerting to not need to jump through a dozen bureaucratic hoops to get the navy to approve her mission expenditures. Her mother used to joke that her unit could get "lobster on speed dial" back during the war, humanity's first encounter with an alien species, and Shepard was beginning to see her commentary might not have been entirely hyperbolic. Anything she requisitioned was approved on her word alone without a single objection.

At 0600 hours, she set down the datapad and shrugged into the last of her clothing. The leather jacket folded over her arm was out-of-place indoors, but the ground floor of the port was a touch cold for her comfort. The automatically generated weather report on her datapad showed the blizzard unabated. There was no orbital activity since yesterday evening. Benezia was still on the ground.

Strapping on her gun, she headed towards the elevators. Alenko was attempting to blink himself awake in the fourth floor lobby. The sight of him caught her by surprise and caused her heart to jump a bit, and she sternly reminded herself that she was out of the business of trying to analyze or suppress that reaction. Instead she flowed her hands behind her back, addressed her eyes towards the elevator door, and greeted him lightly. "Lieutenant."

"Commander. Ma'am," he croaked, and rubbed his face. His hair was still wet.

Her sidelong glance was thoroughly amused. "Not much of a morning person, are you?"

"There's something unnatural about people who like getting up early."

Shepard snickered. He heaved a sigh and rolled his head to look at her. "You don't count. I'm still not convinced you understand that you require sleep at all."

"You need caffeine."

"You need Chakwas to start crushing sedatives into your food."

"I think we're more likely to find coffee on the hotel menu."

The elevator dinged. They boarded the carriage and executed two near-identical, military-drilled turns to face the doors. He said, "I don't know. It is Noveria. I get the feeling they're not especially restrained when it comes to medical practice."

"You can say that twice." She chewed her lip. "I'm concerned that Saren might be developing a biological weapon with Binary Helix. His troops are synthetic. He could deploy it with no risk to his own forces, and I've managed to intercept something being smuggled to a krogan inside the port."

Alenko frowned. "Wherever we've found Saren, we've found krogan."

The elevator doors opened into the restaurant's interior foyer. "Exactly. It could be unrelated, but it would be negligent not to examine every lead. The crew's bringing the package over this morning."

They found a table large enough to conduct an informal briefing as the others trickled in. Shepard picked up the interactive menu and plugged in an order for coffee and toast, while Alenko selected a breakfast special and a large mug of tea. When she questioned him, he explained, "It doesn't taste as good, but tea's easier on the headaches. Drinking coffee daily is a recipe for a migraine."

"They screwed you over pretty good on that one, didn't they."

Alenko shrugged. "That's one way to look at it. But the L3s don't spike nearly as high as the L2s in terms of power output, and even the L4s they've got in trials now don't compare. The L2 implant is a pain to look after, sure, but it lets me make the most of what I've got."

It made a kind of sense. Shepard, always keen to push herself to the absolute limit of her abilities, couldn't swear that in his position she wouldn't agree. Achievement was never without a certain amount of sacrifice.

The waiter dropped off their drinks, and Shepard curled her fingers around the warm porcelain while reaching for the sugar. "On the upside, heavy boxes will never give you much trouble again."

He glanced at the lean, toned muscle of her arm, visible beneath the clinginess of the sweater, his gaze lingering perhaps a few seconds longer than was strictly necessary. "I don't think you have to worry much about heavy boxes, either."

"I can usually pick up whatever I like," she agreed, slyly, ladling more sugar into her cup.

He was openly surprised, though not evidently displeased. Shepard concealed her nervousness over the small sally by stirring the coffee. She shot him a quick glance, saw him smiling, and smirked back over the rim of the mug.

"I don't doubt it," he said at last. "Sure you want some coffee with that? You could just spoon the sugar up directly, like cereal."

"If I put enough in, it becomes a kind of poor man's toffee," she deadpanned, taking a sip.

"Please tell me you're joking."

Shepard laughed. "And I bet you put lemon in your tea."

"I do like things tart." His warm brown eyes sparkled mischievously at her. Then he broke eye contact and sat up abruptly, clearing his throat.

Her brow furrowed, but before she could ask, Chief Williams slid into the chair beside her, yawning. "Morning ma'am, L.T."

Shepard tried not to look as annoyed as she felt. _Reason number fifty-three why this is a bad idea. _"Get some food," she said brusquely. "The rest are coming over from the ship for a briefing, and then we've got a few leads to explore. I'm hoping we might be able to set out for the lab sometime this afternoon."

"You might want to wait for tomorrow if it's that late, Commander," Alenko said, with almost overstated formality. "Driving through a blizzard in the dark is no joke."

"Binary Helix's hot lab is a good six hours away, assuming the roads are clear," Williams concurred, punching her order into the menu. "I heard from one of the rent-a-cops that a whole convoy fell off the road last week when the snowpack started sliding out from under them."

"Avalanche?" Shepard frowned. "This place just gets better and better."

Alenko removed the tea bag. "Worth the risk. I didn't get a lot off the public terminals, but whatever Binary Helix is engineering in that lab, it's big. They're extremely worried about Council scrutiny. Apparently Saren's been smoothing things over."

"Maybe that's how he got a slot on their board." They paused as the server delivered their breakfasts, and took a few minutes arranging silverware and applying condiments. Shepard spread jam on her toast. "Too many odd groups have a stake in Saren's success. Geth, asari renegades, krogan, human terrorists and corporate interests- I don't like it."

"He can't possibly be telling them the truth, aside from the geth," Alenko reasoned, cutting up a sausage. "It's hard to imagine anyone who isn't a machine signing on to bring back something like the reapers."

Shepard made a face. "It's hard enough convincing anyone that part of this crisis is serious, let alone take action."

Williams shrugged and dug into her waffle. "I believe that Saren believes it's true, and the matriarch, and the rest of the people he brainwashed. I just don't know that it's important compared to stopping the attacks on our colonies. We don't have any hard evidence yet."

Shepard and Alenko exchanged a glance. Of everyone on the crew save Liara, he knew the most about the vision she'd been granted and the nightmares it held. Enough, evidently, to convince him it was real, but she couldn't blame Williams for doubting. In her place, Shepard wasn't sure she'd believe either.

Garrus strode to the table, no signs of sleep deprivation and already dressed in his hardsuit. He jerked a thumb over his shoulder. "I found this riffraff hanging around the elevator from the docks."

Liara, Tali, and Wrex trailed behind him, carrying their gear between them along with a heavy gray case. Shepard's gaze lit on it at once. She set down her breakfast and took it from Wrex. "Go ahead and order. They've got just about everything."

As they settled in, she thumped the case on a nearby table and examined the locks. Tali was alarmed. "You're not going to open that here? Shepard, we have no idea what's inside. The case could be trapped or worse."

Alenko peered past the rest. "That's your intercepted package?"

"Yep." She tried the catch. It was going to take finesse, not force, to get this suitcase open. It looked like it could survive being run over by a tank. "Did the scanners at the dock pick up anything?"

"No." Liara bit her lip. "Tali's right. Without knowledge of the contents, prying the package open here represents a significant risk.

Shepard ignored them both. "Garrus, did you find out anything asking around yesterday?"

"Just that the only person who scares the people around here more than their management is Benezia. Her arrival stirred things up."

"Let me guess. They were falling all over each other to make her happy?"

"There was also something about a pinstriped suit that may have exerted some influence." He brought up a security camera still on his omni-tool and leaned over so Shepard could see. Her eyebrows disappeared into her hair.

"Mother always did know how to turn a head," Liara stated, a touch bitterly. She was staring into her tea with a tightly controlled expression.

Shepard flushed, as though she'd been caught at something, though she couldn't fathom what. It was only a picture. "Asari practice diplomacy by any means. Benezia does her job well. We'll worry about her when we get to the hot labs."

"About that." Wrex's order amounted to about two pounds of various pan-fried meats, the kitchen not being accustomed to serving many krogan. Five minutes after being served, half remained. "Do we have any kind of plan to get there?"

"Yes." Shepard reluctantly turned away from the stubborn suitcase. "It's half-assed, but when do we ever do anything full-assed anyway."

"I count seven asses here, ma'am." Williams tossed off a facetious salute and popped another piece of waffle into her mouth.

"Thank you, Chief." Shepard was sardonic. "I spoke with the manager for Synthetic Insights. He's willing to share his illustrious garage privileges if we do him a tiny favor."

Alenko caught the distaste lurking beneath the sarcasm. "What kind of favor?"

"The messy kind." She sighed and leaned back against the table. "Tali, Wrex, I want you to suit up."

Williams and Garrus immediately began to protest. Shepard held up her hand. "I don't want the navy or C-Sec anywhere near this one. I've got some measure of immunity. Once I start involving other authorities, this turns into a shitstorm real fast. While we're gone, try to get this thing open and figure out if the contents relate to Binary Helix or Saren."

She thumped the suitcase. Its lead lining buried the sound. "Any questions?"

"I resigned," Garrus grumbled.

Shepard looked around the table with raised eyebrows. "Anyone else? No? Good. We'll meet upstairs for lunch and go over what we found."

The krogan and quarian finished their meal and quickly followed Shepard out of the restaurant, Shepard pausing near the corporate elevators to strap on her gear. Wrex crossed his arms while he waited. "So what sort of op are we running?"

"Qui'in, the manager, has some dirt on Anoleis." Shepard tugged at her boot, ramming the armor into place. "But before he could move on it, the administrator got wind and shut his office down. They've been tossing it with no success."

She withdrew the OSD from a pocket and handed it to Tali. "This should retrieve the information."

Wrex wasn't satisfied. "What's the catch? You think this mission's dirty."

"The guys Anoleis hired for this job are all ERCS. Off-duty, but still. If there's a body count at the end of this, it won't look good."

Wrex sniffed at the air. "You spend too much time worrying about what looks good."

"Goes with the territory."

Tali shuddered. "These aren't geth, Shepard. Why am I here?"

"In case that OSD doesn't work." She caught her nervous gaze. "It's going to be fine, Tali. If it comes to fighting it's not any different. Trust me."

She drew herself up and nodded. "The only time I've fought people was in that alley, back on the Citadel, when I met you."

"And you did more than fine, if I recall." A smile tugged at her mouth, remembering Tali's death grip on her shotgun.

"You're both a bunch of pyjacks," Wrex rumbled. "Can we fight something now?"

Shepard finished checking over her weapons and straightened, gesturing towards the elevator. "After you."

They rode up in silence. The doors opened on police tape and an armed guard. Her hardsuit was definitely ERCS gear, as was the rifle in her grip, but all markings were concealed beneath rude swaths of black duct tape. The guard ambled their way, her gun held ready but pointed at the floor. "You're not supposed to be here."

"Are you?" Shepard asked rhetorically. "Lorik Qui'in gave me permission to enter his offices."

"We've got orders from the administrator. Nobody goes in or out except for our people." But she sounded less certain than before.

Her coworker, similarly garbed, drew level with the group. "Is there a problem?"

Shepard applied a little more pressure. "You're working off the books. That makes you trespassers at the least, maybe thieves or worse. My mandate gives me broad authority for dealing with criminals."

She shared with them her very best shark smile, the kind that said they better hope she'd already eaten breakfast because it wouldn't be anything to turn their hides into bacon, and casually drummed her fingers against her pistol.

Behind her, Wrex chuckled. "How do you like those odds, kids?"

The pair of guards exchanged a lengthy glance telegraphing their assessment that the ratio of risk to reward had just taken a very sharp rise. The woman exhaled. "Fine. Anoleis isn't paying us enough to deal with spectres or Alliance or whatever the hell you are. How about we take our break, stretch our legs, and so long as you're gone when we get back it'll stay our little secret."

"Just between us girls," Shepard promised, sweetly, her tone an insult. The look she got in return was quite clearly fuck you, but the guards departed without so much as a grumble.

"That was heavy-handed," Tali remarked once they were alone.

"I don't like mercenaries," she answered without much thought, and corrected herself. "I don't like opportunists, especially of the vulture stripe."

"And you don't like being pushed around," the quarian observed dryly. ERCS hadn't exactly gone out of their way to make the _Normandy _crew feel at home.

Shepard shrugged. "The universe has a lot of inertia. I've learned to push back hard if I want to make it move."

Wrex rumbled. "Also, it's fun."

It was, but it didn't seem noble to say so. Shepard's mouth turned up at one corner, just long enough from him to see it. "Let's find Qui'in's office. The executive suite should be upstairs, overlooking the slope."

Port Hanshan was built into the side of a mountain. Its multi-story sheet glass windows took full advantage of the view, even if it was presently marred by the wall of white that was the storm. The office of the Noveria manager for Synthetic Insights was no different. Their boots echoed against the stone floor of the spacious, empty room as they walked up the stairs and across the balcony. Most of the floorspace was open, employee workstations not partitioned from one another, though a few smaller offices and conference rooms were enclosed along the right-hand wall.

Shepard felt a need to fill the stillness. A place at rest when it should be humming with activity and life almost begged it. "How's my project coming, Tali?"

The quarian started. "Oh! I nearly forgot. It's not going very well, I'm afraid."

The commander didn't miss Wrex's subtle shift of interest. She focused on Tali. "What do you need?"

"I've identified the system you want from a catalogue of related systems. However, it's not connected to the extranet." Her eyes narrowed behind the mask. "The only way I can access is it is if I'm standing on Arcturus. I'm sure it interfaces with the station's other systems in some way."

That gave even Shepard pause. "So if I get you to Arcturus Station, you can get my information? Undetected?"

Tali hesitated a few moments, then nodded. "I think so, yes. With enough time."

"How long is enough time?"

"Four hours, maybe a little more."

Four undisturbed hours fiddling around with Arcturus' military systems was a tall order, but if Tali said it was so, Shepard believed her. "I'll think about it."

Wrex's only comment was a faint crinkling of his eyes and the set of his jaw growing perhaps a touch more cynical before he switched the subject. "You know, those cops downstairs probably ran straight to their superiors. Better to disable them at the start and buy more time."

"I thought you'd be disappointed if we left without a real fight," she said lightly.

They arrived at the office. The room was lined with high-tech safes and dominated by a single enormous granite desk dwarfing the top-of-the-line terminal that was its sole ornament. On the wall beside it hung an expensive portrait of what appeared to be a half-grown turian child. There was, Shepard noted, absolutely no evidence of a mother anywhere in the room. Apparently high-powered business was about as kind to long-term relationships as special operations.

The terminal was locked, but not to someone with Tali's expertise. She blew through S.I.'s standard security protocols inside ten minutes. Shepard was impressed. "I have got to learn how to do that."

"It's really not very hard." Tali was a bit self-conscious, though she glowed faintly at the praise. "I can show you some basics when we get back on the ship."

She inserted the OSD and followed the auto-execute with her eyes. It parsed through several junk directories before unlocking a hidden series of files, a mix of financial documents, audio recordings, and vids. The light flashed on the drive as it downloaded the relevant information. Shepard kept an eye on their exit. She wasn't expecting to get away clean- if not here and now, then later, somewhere they weren't expecting it. Anoleis knew how to play dirty.

There was a sound from the balcony. Shepard drew her pistol and held it in both hands, easing towards the door. Footsteps.

With a simple signal, Wrex flanked the opposite side of the hatch. She glanced at Tali, who held up a single finger. Not long. Shepard returned her eyes to Wrex and mouthed the countdown. _Three… two… one…_

They burst onto the walkway with guns raised. The very surprised moonlighting cop didn't hesitate before opening fire. Shepard didn't much care who was shooting at her; once the bullets started coming in earnest, her only goal was to put a stop to it with as much finality as she could muster. Her life was no more or less valuable than her attacker's. Her first shot shattered his shoulder, though unfortunately not the one connected to the arm holding the gun. The next went through his head.

The exchange drew the attention of his back-up. Wrex charged them, shouldering the first out of the way with enough force to knock him to the ground with the telltale crack of bone on stone. The second collided with a spray of fire from his shotgun and fell just as easily.

Shepard followed him with two shots into the fallen man as a matter of course. She shot the krogan a hard glance. "Bottom floor."

He peered over the guard wall to the first level. A handful of cops fanned out along the perimeter, searching the side rooms. "We got more company."

"Rock and roll." Shepard headed for the stairs, holstering the pistol and drawing her rifle.

They took out another rent-a-cop, rounded a partition wall, and came face-to-face with Sergeant Stirling. Her lip curled. "You."

There was no sign of Tali. Shepard didn't look away from Stirling. "I should have expected to find you where it smells like shit. Does your captain know you're here?"

The sergeant continued as though she hadn't heard. Her pale blue eyes could have been two shards of ice and her voice was deadly calm. "Anoleis would throw you off world for what you've done here."

"But not you. You've wanted a pound of my flesh since you laid eyes on me."

Her laugh was bitter, derisive, and held nothing of humor. The barrel of her rifle never wavered. She actually took a step forward. "You spectre types have no respect for the law. For the people who do the dirty work of holding this galaxy together. You're all flash and fire and fame."

_Ah, so you DO recognize me, _Shepard thought, but this one pushed a button and circumvented the snark. "That's not true. I'm on this sorry excuse for a planet looking for a spectre who broke the law."

"Killing cops part of that grand plan?"

"They didn't give me any choice. You should have known better than to send them up against a spectre with orders to shoot on sight." She was overwhelmed by disbelief. "Did you really think I wasn't any good at this?"

Stirling took another step. "Do you know what they did to cop killers on my world?"

That was the point at which Shepard realized that Stirling wasn't at home. Maybe it was the loss of her people, or maybe operating in a place like NDC, which had little to no regard for legalities, drove her out of her head. And for whatever reason she'd chosen to focus that indignation and rage on Shepard. There was no talking her down from this.

Wrex pumped his shotgun. 'Do you know what I'm going to do to you on this one?"

Shepard shot out her knee without preamble.

Stirling hit the ground with a strangled scream of pain and surprise, losing her grip on the rifle in the process. She reached for it immediately. Shepard aimed at her head and kicked it away. "Don't."

The sergeant opened her mouth. Shepard rode right over. "Call off your people. I hear them trying to circle around behind us."

The blonde stared up defiantly. Shepard's finger hugged the trigger. "Do it, or I use your worthless brains to add a splash of color to the decor. Then I'll match it with theirs."

She clutched at her shattered knee, biting her lip against the pain. "There's only three of you. My squad is flanking you as we speak."

A high-pitched electronic noise flooded the atrium, and a massive explosion behind a starboard wall. Two cops stumbled out of the blast and fell without getting up. Two shotgun reports followed it, and Tali appeared, carefully stepping over the bodies. "I got all the ones I could see. There may be more in the back room. Their fancy terminals run on batteries- easy to overload."

"Nice. You got the data?"

Tali reached into a pocket and held up the OSD. Shepard smiled. "You were saying, Stirling?"

The sergeant snarled and lunged for her firearm. Wrex's shotgun blast caught her full in the chest and Shepard's shot a fraction of a second later pinned her body back against the floor. If anything, her eyes seemed warmer with all the cold light gone out.

The commander holstered the gun and looked around at the carnage with a drawn-out breath. "I don't think we made any friends today."

"Who wants to be friendly with people like this?" Wrex spat.

"Good point." All the same, Shepard had no desire to stick around and explain. "I want a closer look at this data before we hand it over. Move out."

They returned to Shepard's hotel room, ignoring the furtive looks of NDC and its client corporations' staff as they paraded by in their gore-smeared armor. Given how inconveniently distant the _Normandy _and how frigid it was in the docking tube, the remainder of the ground team congregated here to examine the contents of the lead case. Tali went to join them, as Shepard made use of one of those thick white towels to clean up, and staked out a corner of the bed with the OSD downloading to her datapad.

Liara came and sat beside her, uncertainly. "Is that the data from Synthetic Insights?"

"Yep." Shepard began to browse the first directory. "If we're jumping into a pit of snakes, I want to know how hard they'll bite first."

"You really hate all politics, don't you. Even the private sector kind." It wasn't much of a question.

Shepard gave her a grudging half-smile, admitting it was true. "How are you holding up?"

"I wish…" Liara twisted her hands in her lap. "I wish my mother trusted me with her work. If only she'd told me, perhaps we could have avoided all this. And now we're headed to a confrontation. It's nearly too much to consider."

Shepard lowered the datapad and waited for Liara to look up at her. "She probably wanted to protect you. You heard Shiala. Benezia knew this mission was deadly. I'm not naïve enough to believe there aren't parents out there who don't love their children, but nothing about your mother suggests she's among them."

"I know. We just left things so badly… I don't know if she's changed under Saren's influence. Maybe she already had. Who knows how long she's been playing this game?"

"If you want to stay here when we leave for the labs, I understand. Nobody would blame you."

"No." Her certainty was earnest, and ironclad. "I need to hear the truth, from her lips. And you've done nothing but help me since we met. I won't abandon you now."

Shepard shook her head, not liking it, but respecting Liara's decision. It wasn't hers to take away. The asari reached for the datapad. "Here. I can bring some order to these files. I have a very useful scanning program for journal articles that should highlight anything of interest."

"Commander," Alenko said from the desk behind her, drawing her attention.

She let Liara have the datapad and got to her feet. The suitcase lay open on the desk, surrounded by her squad, its contents nestled in custom-shaped black foam. Shepard eased between Alenko and Garrus to get a better look. The room wasn't very large; seven was a crowd. She was suddenly quite aware of the lieutenant standing only inches from her back and it was thoroughly distracting. She'd brush against him if she made too sharp a turn.

"We finally figured out the locks," Garrus was saying. "They were keyed to biometric markers. Expensive stuff."

_Focus, Nathaly. _"Attuned to the hanar seller or the krogan buyer?"

"Definitely hanar." Alenko leaned in over her shoulder to get a better look at the smuggled item. "It's some kind of ammo mod?"

The package was deceptively small, definitely the correct size to be mounted around the shaving chamber of most larger firearms, where the gun chipped off tiny wedges of material from a large block to manufacture bullets. The module could coat or otherwise modify each freshly machined slug to imbue it with additional destructive properties. While some mods replaced the ammo block entirely- with tungsten, for example, to better penetrate armor- this one was not of that style. This mod would apply a thin film over the surface, or refine the shape of the bullet to better suit its purpose. There were almost always trade-offs- increases in heat generation, slower rates of fire to prep the ammo, or throwing the balance and increasing kickback.

Standard-issue navy gear was wholly unmodified. Hell, a marine was lucky to requisition a basic scope, much less the kind of hardware she was looking at now. Many of them bought their own. Shepard had her own kit, like most, though some of her selections were relatively exotic. The Alliance tried to restrict the modifications to reasonable limits but the commander could never be bothered with rules that interfered with her ability to do her duty. It was easier to keep the objectionable gear out of sight.

Williams, who had been standing sentinel by the window bored out of her mind, wandered over with renewed interest. "I don't recognize it."

Shepard had an unsettling suspicion. She plucked it out of the case and turned it over in her hands, then held it up to her nose and sniffed it.

Her crew stared. An astringent tang not unlike unflavored cough syrup filled her nostrils. Shepard let out a sigh and tossed it back on the case. "It paints a radioactive stripe down the side of each bullet. The binder for the polonium paint has a very distinctive smell." She glanced up at the group. "It's incredibly toxic. Even if it doesn't make you sick straight off, cancers can develop around the wound site months or years later."

"Aren't those illegal?" Alenko asked.

"Not on Tuchanka." Wrex laughed. "Anyone who'd die from radiation is long gone already."

"Anyone who's caught with one on the flotilla is subject to exile," Tali volunteered.

Shepard shook her head. "They're not sold openly in Council space, that's for sure. And it's not the sort of thing Binary Helix would research. Totally different line of work."

Alenko's brow furrowed. "So was getting asked to carry it coincidental, or was someone trying to set you up?"

"I don't know. I got the name of the supposed customer, a krogan. Inamorda."

Wrex sat back on his heels and crossed his arms. "I know an Inamorda. Met him on a job once. He's from an inferior clan. It's a miracle they still get enough traffic with the female clans to continue existing."

"Krogan keep turning up alongside Saren's army. Could their clan have cut a deal?"

He shrugged. "Hard to see how the other clans back on the home world would've tolerated it, but anything's possible."

Reason said it was coincidence. Her gut said something felt wrong. "I'm leaving the hanar out of this. We'll find this Inamorda and make the delivery ourselves."

"Shouldn't be hard," Alenko said. "How many krogan can there be on Noveria?"

His face wasn't more than a half meter from hers as she turned to answer, jammed in as they all were around the desk. His eyes were a warm brown color, like well-polished wood or worn leather. She hadn't let herself notice before. Whatever she meant to say flew straight out of her head.

Wrex's own rambling filled the gap before anyone could take note. "Not damn likely. This isn't our kind of place. Too many prissy negotiations and not enough real work."

She snapped out of it and redirected her gaze to the weapon mod. "Good. You can come with and watch me 'negotiate'."

"Humans are one thing, but krogan are harder to scare off."

Shepard closed the case, careful not to reengage the locks. "I don't want to scare him." A lopsided smile. "But I will leave an impression."

"Now I want to come," Williams joked.

"Sorry, I'm keeping this one small." She glanced at the clock. "Get some food. We'll find Inamorda and arrange the hand-off with Qui'in."

Liara stood up from the bed and held out the datapad. "I ran a quick search. Jurdon Inamorda arrived the day after my mo- the day after Matriarch Benezia. His official visit request lists meeting a client on Peak 9, but the storm's stranded him like everyone else. Security footage suggests you should find him in the bar."

Shepard scanned the information, noting that Inamorda's visit request was approved by Anoleis personally, and had no idea whether that was standard or exceptional procedure. "Thanks. Maybe it won't take so long after all."

Back downstairs, they saw no sign of their turian or krogan quarries, and so they found a table to wait it out. The hotel had the only bar in Port Hanshan. Wrex was confident that Inamorda would visit sooner or later. Shepard fiddled with the end of one of her twin braids. It wasn't like they'd fly in her face while she fought; she had no idea why the navy had such a problem with longer hairstyles. Maybe her spectre appointment could buy her a little less scrutiny, at least when she wasn't out in front of the whole damn world in her dress blues. But then she also had a ship full of navy crew, and there was that "setting an example" problem.

Shepard snorted to herself. Her mother would burst a vein if she got wind of her daughter slacking off on protocol.

"Nervous, Shepard?" Wrex asked. There was that particular gleam in his red eyes, the one he always got when he sensed weakness. She wasn't sure if it was a krogan thing, a predator thing, or just a Wrex thing, or even whether it was conscious.

"Just thinking what my mom would say if she caught me with my hair out of regulation on duty." She sprawled back in the chair and dragged her fingertip along a crack in the tabletop. "Captain Shepard strongly believes in towing the line."

"Tradition will be the death of us," Wrex opined with dry cynicism. "My father was stuck in the past, too."

Shepard drummed her fingers on the table, scanning the crowd. The three martini lunch appeared alive and well on Noveria. Off-handedly, she said, "You mentioned he tried to kill you."

"Yeah." He sat back, also watching the other patrons with narrowed eyes. "Almost succeeded, too. Of course, he had a small army waiting to ambush me. Hiding in the graves of our dead like honorless pyjacks." Wrex spat. "He ate my knife before I left though. Fitting parting gift from me to Tuchanka."

Qui'in still hadn't arrived, nor had any krogan. She sipped at her glass of water, and set it back down beside the remains of her sandwich. Wrex was only pretending not to care, and that was rare for him, though there was no hint of regret. "You haven't been back?"

"Why bother? Bunch of idiots convinced the best thing for our people is another bloody war. That's the same thing as suicide with the genophage on us."

"I thought krogan loved nothing better than a good fight."

"Sure. But it's not worth wiping out our entire species." His massive head turned towards her, his lip curled. "We can't replenish our numbers quickly enough for war. Just one generation, we needed to focus on breeding. Warlord Jarrod… my father… disagreed."

"So it would seem." She tilted her head. "You ever think about trying to persuade anyone else?"

He studied her, his expression inscrutable, before turning back to the wider room. "This was three hundred years ago. Who cares anymore."

Shepard shrugged and likewise returned to waiting. Still no sign of Inamorda. "Long time to hold a grudge."

"I'd think you'd know something about that."

"I have mistakes, not grudges. Big difference." A smile, thin and fleeting. "You learn from a mistake. A grudge learns from you. Grows up, grows teeth, and sinks them into parts you didn't even know you had."

He raised his snout and crossed his arms. "Korgan families aren't like human. We spend our childhoods with the female clan. And we're expected to grow up strong. I've seen your vids. My father didn't tuck me into bed. I didn't even know him well until after I'd passed through the rites. You kill one lousy thresher maw and suddenly warlords and clan chiefs want your attention. Heh."

A broad, self-satisfied grin crossed his face. Shepard likewise sat back. "One day I'm going to kill me one of those worms, see if it's as hard as you like to tell it."

"Nobody's done it on Tuchanka since my kraant took one out. And your species is kind of squishy, Shepard." He laughed. "_Normandy's _forward battery doesn't count."

"That'd go on Joker's tally anyway. Nah, I'll do it up close. I owe them a little payback."

His laughter went on longer that time, though at her naivety or audacity Shepard had no clue. Water was beginning to bead on the sides of the glass and roll down to the stone surface, leaving a ring. She moved the glass and amused herself for several quiet minutes by doodling patterns with the liquid, quickly evaporating into nothing. Wrex shifted impatiently in his chair. It creaked ominously under his considerable weight.

The lunch crowd thinned into casual afternoon meetings and people taking off work early. Shepard was figuring out that the hotel's bar was bustling thanks to the storm, hosting a number of snowed-in scientists, managers, and facility staff with little else to do. There was an air of uncommon camaraderie amongst them as staff from disparate or even competitor companies met to drink and grouse. With the exception of the alcohol it wasn't all that different from a navy mess hall on one of those small colonies the batarians loved to visit in the days before Torfan, the easy feeling of people fighting similar battles coupled with the anxiety of not knowing when it would all go back to hell. These people were friends for the moment, but soon they'd return to their dangerous, questionable experiments and cut-throat ladder climbing. The blizzard was a reprieve.

Shepard respected research but had difficulty respecting this. They invented their own risks, this phenomenal manufactured stress, and for what? To increase the profits of a few already insanely profitable corporations a couple fractions of a percentage? And she didn't like the way they were threading loopholes in laws and exploiting Colonial Affairs' stretched resources to do it.

But she also knew something Garrus, Williams, and the rest were still learning- nobody could change everything. Nobody had that much ammo or concentration. The artful part was in choosing which to let go, and in occasionally trusting someone else, like her superiors or the laws of parliament, to make that choice for her when they had better information or more experience. Anything else led to a place where she started thinking hers was the only voice that mattered. No matter how she might joke, she really didn't think the galaxy would be a better place as ruled by Queen Nathaly.

If she were honest, that was also what rubbed her the wrong way about the Council. No three people should possess that much power. That a triumvirate could adequately appreciate, let alone represent, the needs of a dozen species, from colonies to space stations to homeworlds, wealthy, struggling, old and young- it was unfathomable. Even they knew they couldn't do it. That was why they'd created special tactics and reconnaissance, because the only way to approach the task was by the dirty road.

The light from the communal area of Port Hanshan streaming through the door was momentarily cut off as a massive, armored patron entered the bar. Shepard got Wrex's attention by kicking at his leg; he was as bored as she. "Think that's our man?"

They watched the krogan amble towards a hightop upstairs table and place an order. He leaned against it while he waited, causing it to tilt alarmingly, and turned his face towards them as he surveyed the room.

"It's him," Wrex said with certainty, his hand straying to the shotgun at the small of his back without conscious thought.

"Easy," she cautioned. "This could be nothing. No point in blazing guns in an enclosed place full of civilians."

"He's a bounty hunter. He'll shoot first if I don't get something in under the table," he grumbled, but left the weapon where it was.

Shepard picked up the case as she hopped down from her chair. They approached Inamorda just behind a server carrying a thick-walled ceramic glass containing his drink. Inamorda looked her up and down before his eyes flashed to her companion. "A human weakling and the famous Urdnot Wrex. Your standards have dropped. What in the hell do you want?"

Shepard didn't wait for Wrex to answer. She jerked her chin at the cup. "What're you drinking?"

"Human blood, with cinnamon," Inamorda answered promptly, with an unsettling grin.

Without breaking eye contact, Shepard seized the mug and took a healthy draw. It burned like thermite all the way down her throat and settled in the pit of her stomach with all the dark promise of a singularity, but she only licked her lips and set it back on the table. "A little sharp for cinnamon."

Inamorda stared at her, his jaw dropping slightly. Even Wrex was taken aback. "That's ryncol!"

"Is it? Never had it before."

The krogan exchanged looks of disbelief. Wrex spoke first. "You should be on the ground babbling nonsense. That stuff hits aliens like a tomkah with the accelerator jammed."

Inamorda started laughing and took a drink himself. "I like you, human. Have a seat."

Shepard took station opposite him at the table and laid her case on the surface. He eyed it with some interest. "What's that?"

"My name is Shepard. I need to ask you about the contents of this case."

"You're the spectre come looking for Saren." The grin faded. He shot Wrex a look. "Never thought to find you in the company of Council toadies. Maybe all that crap about standing down from our traditions ran deeper than we thought."

Wrex made a noise like a growl. His mouth was a long flat gash in his face. Shepard turned back to Inamorda. "Your genophage problem isn't going to cure itself."

"No. It won't." He pointed a finger squarely at Wrex's chest. "And this pyjack tried to convince the clans to do exactly that. Huddle down and try to make enough babies to keep from dying out. That's a woman's way to go. We're krogan. We go down fighting. That's how it's always been. But this fool would have us die like varren." He snorted. "The warlord calls him to a Crush to stop this nonsense, and he knifes him, right there in the Hollows on sacred ground. Granted, we were all shocked he even had the honor to show up-"

He might have carried on, but at that moment Wrex let out a massive grunt and threw his skull forward, knocking his head plate against Inamorda's with enough force to send the other krogan sprawling back against the barricade guarding them from falling to the lower floor. His arms flailed over the railing.

Before he could get his bearings, Wrex levered a hand against his hump and drove his face down into the table. Shepard drew back the lead-shielded case just in time.

Inamorda chuckled as blood ran out his nose. "Most of us manage to make our way as mercs without forgetting who we are."

"I know damn well who I am. And I'm done helping idiots figure out how to keep our species alive."

"This is all very amusing," Shepard said with thinning patience, folding her hands on the table as calm as anything. "But we can discuss ancient history some other time. I'm working on a schedule here."

The pinned krogan snorted, spewing another clot of blood onto the table. "Don't get me started on taking orders from a-"

Wrex slammed his head into the table again. Not once in all this violence had he raised his voice though half the bar was staring. "I'm doing her a favor, because she's got more honor in her toes than you've got in your whole body, and a quad bottom-feeders like Clan Jurdon can only dream of."

"She's a _human female_!" It was difficult to tell which attribute Inamorda held in higher disdain.

"Accident of birth. Can't blame her for that." Wrex held him to the table with a painful grasp.

Shepard spun the case and flicked it open, careful to hide the contents from their spectators. Her voice stayed low, inaudible from a distance. "You recognize this?"

He grunted contempt. She fixed him with a frigid glare. "I'm allowing Wrex the courtesy of taking out his own trash, as friends do. Don't force me to get involved. You won't like it."

Either he had enough of the game or he believed her, because he gave a straight answer. "It's my shipment. I don't want to know how you got it."

"Why did you buy it?"

"I was hired as insurance after the flag went up on Peak 15. But my shuttle was delayed. Saren's bitch had already gone up." He coughed. "They've got some kind of new species up there. That's why I needed special rounds. The mod was supposed to be waiting when I got here."

That explained why the hanar was so nervous. "Who hired you?"

"Saren's people, who do you think? They say he doesn't like her commandos. Thinks they're too cagey. So sometimes he pads her protection roster."

Wrex made a sound of surprise. "Working for that turian is a death sentence."

"No." Inamorda smiled. "He's going to cure the genophage."

Shepard was unnerved by his conviction, but gave that bit of insanity all the credit it deserved. She jerked her head at Wrex, who reluctantly eased off, and shut the case, holding it out to the bounty hunter with a taunting smile. "Now, was that so hard?"

"You're… giving me the merchandise?"

"You paid for it." Shepard shrugged. There was no point in detaining him. A random merc hire wouldn't know anything valuable. "If Saren thinks you need ordnance like that to take on whatever he's keeping on Peak 15, you're going to need it."

"You're a strange one." He took the case, and there was a shade of respect mixed with the anger in his eyes before he walked away. Gradually, the volume rose again as the patrons went back to their own business.

Shepard reached across the table and took another sip of the ryncol. Once you got passed the sensation that the skin of your tongue had been etched away by pure acid, it wasn't half bad. She raised an eyebrow at Wrex over the rim. "'Tried to convince the clans'?"

He was almost embarrassed, glancing at the ground. "Yeah, well, that was a long time ago."

"What made you stop?"

"Nobody wanted to listen." Wrex, too, gulped at the remains of the drink. "This is how I know yelling to the Council about reapers is pointless. Nobody wants to hear any truth except what pleases them."

She ran a hand over her hair, working her fingers through the strands under her braids. The unfamiliar hairdo was pulling on her scalp. "At least the people around here might give us fewer hassles after that display."

Wrex had other things on his mind. He was silent, before voicing the question abruptly. "Do you think what he said about the genophage is true?"

"No. Saren wants one thing, and it has nothing to do with helping anybody." Shepard sighed. "It does explain why we've had krogan hounding us at every turn, though."

He grunted and took another drink. She rubbed the side of her nose, her turn to be self-conscious. "Thanks, by the way. For what you said."

"I'll never forget you walking into that interrogation in C-Sec and laughing at us. Reminded me of the female clan leaders back home. They never put up with hot air either." He looked away. "We've fought together now. Truth is, this is the first time since I left Tuchanka that I feel like I've got people watching my back."

Shepard had been there. She didn't like admitting it any more than him. "I know what you mean. There's something about this ship."

"It's just a damned boat."

"I sent my dad a picture of it. Figured it couldn't be all that classified if we're parking it in the middle of the frigging Citadel. He congratulated me on finally discovering a way to actually take up residence in a sports car."

"Alright, so it's not a boat, but you know what I mean." He picked up the ceramic cup. "I think I'm going to hang around here for awhile."

She left him in the lounge and returned to her room, changed out of her hardsuit, and grabbed a quick shower to rinse off the morning's fight. A quick browse through NDC's extranet site got her contact information for Loriq Qui'in, and one call later they had arrangements to meet that evening and make the exchange. Until then, Shepard had little to do but wait. Qui'in would get her garage pass. Kaidan was right; it was too late to leave today, but at first light tomorrow they'd roll out. As an afterthought, she arranged a strategy session following her meeting with the S.I. manager and also alerted the mechanic, Li, that she'd likely be needing a few of his Makos the following day.

The shower might have cleaned her up, but her suit was another story. She spread one of the mammoth towels out on the floor and lay the pieces on top of it, working at the grime with the stiff brush that was designed for attending to the ceramic plating. Bits of dried blood drifted from the brush to the towel where she scrubbed. The room was silent except for the low rasping sound of the bristles scratching over the surface.

The moment of relaxation came welcome. For all that Port Hanshan was brimming with people and politics almost deliberately fashioned to offer maximum interference with her mission, a part of her was glad of the chance to stop and catch her breath, just for a little bit. Every marine recruit was drilled over and over and over again on how to maintain their hardsuit, until they could do it one-armed and half-dead, if necessary, but after eleven years she still didn't find it a chore. It reminded her of long afternoons with her father, taking apart engines to see how they worked, and provided a ribbon of continuity through all her experiences. No matter where or when or what was happening, the suit always needed cleaning, calibrating, and a good dose of fresh omni-gel. It was refreshingly simple.

She wondered what would happen after it was over. The spectre thing wasn't a temporary assignment that would go away, even if she'd accepted the post more out of a sense of expediency than desire. The Citadel was sure as hell nicer than Arcturus- if she could afford to live there. Spectres didn't exactly get a stipend, and she doubted living quarters were a reimbursable expense. Maybe she could live out of her tiny office, or a motel, or something, until she got her bearings. It wasn't like her personal belongings back in her tiny military apartment would fill more than a duffle bag anyhow.

If Hackett's approach was anything to go by, the navy wasn't through giving her orders, which was reassuring. Shepard doubted it would fill all her time. Spectres were expected to find situations that stank and poke their nose in, loosely directed by the Council. It wasn't like she didn't find five things a day that merited a deeper look. With a little luck and a good word from Anderson, the Alliance would likely allow her to continue using the _Normandy _as a base of operations. Thinking of the ship under anyone else's command was unsettling, more than it should have been. Ships changed hands all the time. They were a resource, not a personal possession.

But damn it, this was her ship. From bow to stern and all three decks. She felt comfortable there in a way she didn't in her apartment, or this hotel room, or even her parents' house. It was impossible to rationalize.

Shepard plugged the suit into her datapad and initiated a standard diagnostic routine. The crew was exceptional as well. Everyone got along. Everyone was focused and working to the best of their ability towards their common goal. Pressly's X.O. duties in that regard were light- just as well seeing as the man had the interpersonal skills of a concussed goose.

Her omni-tool blinked. "Shepard."

"Spectre, this is Gianna Parasini. I think we should talk."

There was no stretch in guessing why. "I don't think we have much to say to each other. In another day or three I'll be out of your hair and you can start cleaning up."

"I know what happened at Synthetic Insights. Those were ERCS personnel."

"Moonlighters for your boss, taking pay under the table." A coy smile. "Or so I heard."

Parasini didn't bat an eye. "I know what you were after, and I think you got it."

"Why?"

"I doubt you would have left so soon otherwise." She was professional, each word enunciated without inflection. "I'm only asking for five minutes of your time, before you speak with Qui'in. There's more to this than you understand. If you don't like my offer you can walk."

Her instinct said to invite the secretary to go to hell, but her brain said wait. Shepard pursed her lips. "Five minutes. 0700 by the elevator entrance to the restaurant. If you can't get there until 0701, don't bother."

"Understood, spectre." Parasini cut the call.

Shepard turned back to her suit maintenance without a second thought.

/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\

As seven o'clock drew near, Shepard headed for the elevators and found Williams and Alenko waiting in the lobby. There was a momentary confusion, as she was certain she hadn't invited either crewman to her meeting with Qui'in.

It must have shown on her face, because Williams volunteered, "I'm on my way down for a bite to eat before talking strategy. You got the pass?"

"I'll have it by then." She turned to Alenko. "You hungry too?"

"Not me. I met the guy whose job is to patrol around the catwalk at the top of the building every night. Perimeter check, standard security stuff. I asked if I could come along and take a look. Bet the view's spectacular." He sounded excited.

Shepard was baffled. "It's still snowing like crazy."

"How often do you get a chance to feel the wind in your hair or the snow on your face, deployed to a ship? Anyway, apparently you can still see enough to make it worth sending someone up to check."

Williams shook her head. "Something is not right with you, L.T."

He smiled at the door. "I'm ok with that."

The elevator took them down to the main level, where it was a short walk to the bar. Parasini was already waiting, dressed in slick purple today, her hazel eyes darting around. "Shepard."

Ignoring the questioning looks of her crew, she sidled up to the secretary and crossed her arms. "Talk fast."

She took a breath and extended her hand. "It's time we met properly. Detective Gianna Parasini, Noveria Development Corporation, Department of Internal Affairs."

There was none of the aloof, calculating, aim-to-please assistant left about her. In its place was a determined woman with a confident manner and a quirking mouth. Shepard shook her hand automatically. "Alright, I'll admit I didn't see that coming. You work internal security for NDC?"

"Yes." She kept her voice low, wary of being overheard. "I've been investigating Anoleis for nearly ten months, the last six undercover as his secretary. We're wise to his extortion racket, and that data you collected is the proof I need to bring this matter to a close."

Shepard's hand went to her pocket, fingering the OSD. "I thought corruption was celebrated in Port Hanshan."

"We don't care what anyone does so long as business isn't hurt. Anoleis is driving clients away. Not even our executive board will tolerate that."

"I need that garage pass. Your political squabbles are a waste of my time, and I'm not sorry to say it."

"Convince Qui'in to testify before the Board, and I'll be certain you get it.

"You can't be serious." Shepard took a step closer. "If you had any respect for how dangerous things are for our colonists right now, you'd have sent me to Peak 15 when I arrived instead of forcing me to jump through these ridiculous hoops."

"Fate of billions and all that. I couldn't possibly understand howimportant _your _work is." Parasini rolled her eyes. "Spectre-"

Shepard had enough. "In ten minutes, I'll have what I need. You can try to convince him yourself once he has this OSD. I'm done dancing for you."

"I'm Anoleis' secretary!" she protested. "You think he's going to believe me? He'll read it as a last-ditch attempt by the Administrator to seize those records."

Parasini grabbed her arm as she started to go, a last-ditch pitch. "You've got some inkling of what this place can do. Is it in anyone's best interest that someone as susceptible and small-minded as Anoleis remain in charge?"

Shepard started to tell her exactly where she could stuff her pretense of ethics, when Alenko coughed quietly. "It's the right thing to do, Commander. You know it is."

She looked back at him, biting her lip, Parasini's grip firm on her arm. He continued, in that perfectly reasonable tone that was so hard to argue against. "It's not like we can roll out of here tonight anyway, so it won't cost us any time, and you never know when we might be back here. It'd be nice to have a… friendlier reception."

She glanced back at Parasini's earnest face, and gave her arm a jerk to free it. "Alright, L.T. But you're coming with me, and I hope to hell you have an argument that'll work on Qui'in."

Shepard stalked off, thoroughly annoyed, and Alenko shrugged an apology to Parasini before following in her wake. The internal affairs officer crossed her arms and watched them go, not without a measure of cynical surprise, before sliding her eyes back to Williams. "Not exactly usual, gainsaying a superior officer and getting away with it."

"Not in my experience, ma'am."

"So," Parasini said, conversationally, as if they were making small talk, "Just how long has the spectre been banging her lieutenant?"

"Hell," Ash said, rolling her eyes and likewise folding her arms. "I wish they would just get it over with. It'd be a lot less awkward around here."

Across the bar, it didn't take long for Shepard to locate Qui'in, seated in the same booth as before, just as hopelessly inspecting the menu. He folded it as they sat. "Ah, Spectre. I was beginning to wonder if you'd lost your nerve and sold me out."

"You're one of the few people here willing to work with me," she said frankly. "I wouldn't trust my other options to hold up their end."

"Yet you do trust me. Interesting."

"Let's just say you're the least unreliable." She pulled out the OSD and held it up in her palm. "Your information."

"Perfect." He reached for it, and she drew back a bit. His eyes narrowed. "Do we have a deal, or no?"

"There's been a glitch. An agent from Hanshan's internal affairs got wind of our bargain. She approached me." Shepard took a breath. "She… 'requested' your testimony before the board of directors."

Qui'in's anger was immediate. "You're withholding my property so that you can dictate how I use it? I thought you were a reasonable person, Shepard."

"Damn right I am." She slapped her free hand flat on the table. "This nonsense, this- this _circus _of a company has threaded every loophole our legal system possesses. You've made an art of it. This one I can stop."

He leaned forward, eyes dark. "You're no auditor, and this affair has nothing to do with your work."

Alenko folded his hands. "Look, everyone in this port is chafing under Anoleis' bribes. They might toe the line in public, but in private, amongst each other, they'll be singing your praises."

"My company relies on the goodwill of the Executive Board-"

Shepard pressed him. "You're never going to have a bigger opportunity to earn their favor. C'mon, Qui'in. The board was already investigating Anoleis. You're delivering the goods they need to clean house. They'll be falling all over themselves to do you a favor."

"Not to mention you're going to make an internal affairs agent look really good on her performance review," Alenko added. "She'll remember that."

"I'll make sure of it," Shepard promised.

He looked from one of them to the other, before dropping his head into his hands and rubbing his eyes, issuing a long-suffering sigh. "You've made your case. I doubt I have much choice anyway. Let your… IA friend know I'll be waiting."

"Excellent." Shepard flashed him a bright smile, mostly genuine, and pushed the OSD towards his side of the booth. "A pleasure meeting you."

"Quite." He took the drive, weighing it in his hands. "Shepard."

She looked over her shoulder. "What?"

"If you tire of doing the Council's dirty work, give me a call. Synthetic Insights is also looking for individuals so… driven and opportunistic." His smile had a razor edge. "You could go far in business."

"I'll keep it in mind," she lied, shortly, and left him to his thoughts.

She walked to the door with Alenko without any conscious direction, her mind on the next step of their plan. They'd need two Makos, which meant one would have to squeeze four, but that was alright. Supplies… how far was Peak 15? Six hours, Williams guessed? Liara would know by now…

"Commander?" Alenko asked, breaking into her musing. His brow was furrowed.

She blinked. "Sorry, what?"

"You were off in your own world there." He smiled. "I asked if you wanted to tag along, or if there was somewhere else you were headed."

Shepard abruptly realized she'd followed him halfway across the port, leaving her rather chagrined and grasping after the conversation. "Just thinking about tomorrow. Sure, I'd love to come."

He was surprised, but pleased. "Hey, great."

"Don't look so shocked." They resumed walking towards the garage, the location of the service access.

"You do have strong feelings on 'weather', ma'am."

Which was when she remembered exactly where he was going, and recognized that she'd just agreed to go stand in a full-scale blizzard 'admiring the view'. _Shit._ But now it would be awkward if she backed out, so she mustered what she hoped seemed like enthusiasm. "Maybe we'll get a glimpse at this Peak 15. It would be nice to know where we're going."

By the time they reached the service ladder, she was almost enjoying the notion. He was reminiscing about great snows past in Vancouver, and it was hard not to find days filled with steaming mugs, cancelled obligations, and neighborly company a little charming. And she liked listening to him talk like this, about a city he loved and a land-bound culture of sorts she didn't fully understand. It made her feel warm inside, almost like some of the heat from his glowing descriptions got inside her despite the cool hallways.

They entered a small room no larger than a walk-in closet and found a broad-shouldered man shrugging into one of the parkas lining a rack against the wall. In cubbies above them sat protective goggles, thick gloves, hats, and scarves. Boots in a variety of sizes were arrayed below. All of the equipment was an eye-watering shade of neon orange- the better to see against the snow, she guessed.

"Hey, Owens," Alenko said. "Got room for one more?"

He glanced back at Shepard. Owens' face was a stripe of ebony punctuated by two dark eyes between the hat and the coat's neck flap. He opened it to speak freely. "You didn't mention you were working with the spectre."

"Is that a problem?" Shepard asked, mildly. She wouldn't be sorry to see the excursion canceled, but she felt badly for Kaidan, who was looking forward to it.

Those deep eyes studied her for a prolonged moment. "Not for me."

She raised an eyebrow. "Your management didn't send out a persona non grata?"

"They sent it all right. I just don't give a damn." Owens shrugged, his mouth a hard line of disapproval. "Seems like you're the only one around here who doesn't see this war as an opportunity. My brother was a marine on Eden Prime. So if you want a look at the roof- all I have to say is, yes ma'am."

She paused, and nodded her respect. "It was hell down there. I'm sorry for your loss."

"That means a lot coming from you." He gestured at the gear and re-sealed the flap, muffling his voice. "Get kitted up. Grab whatever fits- it's all open season here."

Shepard sat on the floor, removed her shoes, and started pulling on a pair of snow boots. "What was your brother's name?"

"Sergeant Wayne Owens, 232nd Brigade, SAMC," he recited with a touch of pride.

"I've run into my share of 232ers. Good men all."

"Yes, ma'am." Owens watched them finish outfitting themselves, and made a few expert adjustments to their gear- a few more, perhaps, to Shepard than Alenko, she noted sourly. Her lack of experience pricked at her ego.

They followed the burly man up the ladder, a significant climb in its own right, and onto a suspended walkway hanging from the ceiling. It swayed as they walked its length to an access hatch, no more than 150 centimeters tall, and held shut by a vast wheel like on the submarines of old. Owens spun it with the ease of long practice, ignoring its rusty squeal, and shouldered it open against the wind. A gust of snow smattered over the walkway as he held it open.

Both marines ducked through the hatch and out into a world of swirling white punctuated by brief lances of sundown light and glimpses of distant hills. Shepard had only a moment to wonder at it before the wind smacked her against the wall and scoured a patch of cheek exposed by her climb with razor-sharp ice crystals.

She yelped and tugged the scarf back into place. Naturally, this exposed a new area, and by the time she was through, the whole thing was altogether too loose and strands of copper hair were flying free of her hood with an electrostatic crackle. Shepard caught the laughter of her companions on the wind.

"To hell with both of you," she said crossly, which only invited more laughter, so she ignored them and crossed the scant meter to the catwalk's railing. It hugged the side of the Port Hanshan building like a wedding ring. If she reached up, her fingers could curl around the lip of the roof, crusted with cakey ice.

Once she got used to the driving snow and the white film it put over her sight, her curiosity stood up in unexpected awe. It reminded her of the earthquake back on Therum, if a pale imitation- an ancient and wholly natural, unthinking phenomenon that nonetheless defied every human attempt to tame it. Their starships could cross the galaxy in a matter of days but they remained as helpless as ever in the face of planetary wrath. Her feet strayed closer to the guardrail and she shouted over the storm. "This is incredible."

She couldn't see any of Alenko's face behind the goggles and the scarf and the rest of it, but she got the sense that he was grinning as he joined her, looking over the side as much as could be dared in the high wind. Owens' chuckle carried. "We get about ten of these big mothers a year. It's not so bad towards the ground."

"This is my first," she yelled. "I've lived in space my whole life. Never been snowed on."

'This is a hell of an introduction." He withdrew an electronic instrument from his pocket and flicked it on. "I need to complete my inspection. Feel free to poke around."

Owens shambled off down the catwalk and was soon lost behind the wall of white, save for the occasional break, leaving them quite alone in the world.

She expected it would feel cold and dead and dark, this kind of storm, and certainly through the massive panes of Port Hanshan's windows this was the case as it thrashed in silent fury. But out here it was the furthest from dead a thing could be. The wind rolled her back and forth like an oversized dog sniffing at a new toy, its lesser tendrils tugging at her hood and hair with open mischief. Currents of snow floated on eddies in torrents at turns soft as dew and unrelentingly hard. The setting sun's reddish-yellow glow backlit the snowfall and made it all seem warmer than it was, reflecting off the occasional glimpse of the mountainside far below. And the sound! It sang and whistled, moaned and screamed, as if it were having a conversation with itself, or perhaps with the square stubborn building it embraced.

It made her want to take readings, capture its playful fury, find new ways to test its strength. Though rationally she was aware it would eat her alive, a part of her could not help but wonder if there was some means, some apparatus, that might allow her to drift on the currents as easily as one of its snowflakes, to really feel it in her limbs and bones…

Shepard could feel Kaidan watching her despite the swirling snow and the massive gold-tinged goggles they each sported. They stood out like parrots in their orange parkas. He leaned closer, at once muffled by his gear and loud to compensate for the wind. The quality wasn't unlike talking helmet-to-helmet during a comm blackout, touching your neighbor to communicate through vibrations. "Well?"

At a loss to describe it, she flashed him an elated grin, high on the storm's own energy, and leaned as far over the rail as she dared, trying to see all the way down the slope. The snow spiraled in one cascade after another down into the depths of the valley. It was almost dancing.

A particularly nasty gust tore off her hood and for a fractional second questioned her balance. She felt her stomach drop out even as she knew there was no real danger of capitulating over, and there was a hand at her back and shoulder, pushing her firmly back to the ground. Her face turned towards him, amused, as her rapidly-unraveling braids whipped about her head. "I'm not going to fall."

"No," he said firmly, not removing his hand from her back. "You're not."

The slight show of protectiveness should have grated, but for some reason did not, perhaps because it wasn't in the least bit patronizing. She had been gaping over the railing like a lemming in mid-leap. Shepard shifted closer to him and he did not move away. "Is it like this in Vancouver?"

"Not like this. Never seen one of these from the top of a mountain." His tone reflected the same wonder she was feeling, not a thought for the cold and only half of one for the risk of standing so high and exposed. "You really never felt snow before?"

She shook her head. Crackly bits of ice were beginning to form around the seals of her mask, irritating her skin with cold fire. "Not a lot of precipitation on Mars."

"Shame. No sledding as a kid, no skiing." His volume rose with the wind. "While you're here, you should eat some of it."

"_Eat _it?" Shepard was certain she hadn't heard him right.

"No water tastes better than freshly fallen snow."

"It's _Noveria _snow. It's probably radioactive." But she pulled down her scarf and opened her mouth to the wind, feeling the flakes drift onto her tongue and trickle under it cool streams of crisp water, just warm enough to swallow. She shivered despite herself as it hit the back of her teeth.

Her omni-tool beeped, a fifteen-minute warning ahead of her strategy session. She frowned disappointment, but held it up so Alenko could see. He nodded, and they turned back inside.

With the hatch shut behind them, the absence of the groaning storm seemed as quiet as a tomb. Every clanking step against the metal walkway sounded impossibly loud. Her face and ears burned in the sudden heat, quickly beginning to prickle and itch with the temperature adjustment. She rubbed them mercilessly.

Alenko raised his mask to his forehead and lowered the scarf clear of his chin, brushing off the snow clinging to the parka. As he turned towards her, he was unable to keep from laughing.

She stopped scratching and eyed him. "What?"

He swallowed, gestured towards her, let out another chuckle, and was finally able to speak. "You look like a snow witch."

Suspicious, she activated her omni-tool camera and aimed it towards herself. It showed an image of a woman with furry snow and the occasional chunk of ice clinging to every strand of hair on her head, streaky red where it began to melt. There was a snow line clear around her goggles and her cheeks were rubbed raw. Her ears were so bright they were nearly a brick red, no natural color.

She removed the mask and tried to shake off most of the snow. Mostly, she succeeded in dislodging a few icicles and striking herself with the remnants of her braids. Kaidan was resting against the wall, hands stuffed in the parka pockets and a small smile on her face that made her warm and shy all at once. "Thank you," she said, stumbling, for lack of anything else coming to mind. "That was… exhilarating."

"If I'd known you'd like a snowstorm that much, I'd have asked you along in the first place." There was a hint of teasing, as if he were goading her for her preferences.

"Not that I want to do it often," she quickly added. "It's good to experience new things. No need to _live _in them."

"Hey, I'm not the one who got so carried away that I'm dripping all over the floor."

"I did not get carried away," she said, grinning because she had, and it was wonderful.

"Adrenaline junkie," he grumbled.

She raised her eyebrows. "Are you really that shocked?"

"No, I kind of got that from the way you make bats out of hell look like restrained, conscientious drivers." He gestured towards the ladder, allowing her to head down first.

All the way to the ground, she kept remembering that last gust, the brief instinctive fear of falling with all its terrible freedom, the wind singing in her ears, the pressure of his hand against her spine just where it started to curve through all the layers of her parka, and even as sour shampoo-tasting water ran from her hair down her face, she couldn't keep from smiling.


	36. Chapter 36

Li, the turian mechanic, knew how to get things done. Shepard liked that.

They arrived at the garage as soon as the sun was high enough to stare down between the jagged teeth of the mountains and shine on their road. It wasn't more than a trickle of light; the storm was far from blown out. A long drive ahead. Six hours was an optimistic estimate for perfect weather, perfect roads. Even with a blazing blue sky there would still be snow and rock falls blocking portions of the road, crumbled patches of perma-ice… Makos were built for rugged terrain but the path was narrow and the ravines were deep.

Li shouted to one of his workers, who nodded and crawled under the nearest Mako, and ambled towards Shepard's squad. "Spectre. Got your message. Got two of my best tanks warming up for you."

"Thanks." She felt around the cuff of her glove, adjusting the fit. No doubt the suit could keep up with the bitter cold, at least enough to keep her from freezing to death, but jouncing around in it for hours on end was not an experience she anticipated with relish. It was called a hard suit for a reason. She gave half a thought to grabbing one of the cozy orange parkas out of the utility room- wishful thinking.

Shepard turned towards her crew, hands on her hips. "Alright. You all remember the plan. Alenko, Liara, Garrus, and I take the first Mako. Wrex, Tali, and Williams, you'll follow in the second. Williams and I have first shift driving."

She took a breath, but before she could continue her summary, the door with its thick plates of bottle-green glass slid open to admit Maeko Kimura into the garage, flanked by two ERCS personnel. Her canted eyes swept the scene automatically, years of police work enforcing an unconscious check for hazards. "Commander."

"Captain." Shepard put folded her hands behind her back. Her stomach twisted a little and she bounced on the balls of her feet, a touch of wariness after what occurred at the Synthetic Insights office, but she wasn't about to bring it up first. The security chief didn't look like she'd come to arrest anyone.

Kimura's pink bow mouth turned up slightly, lending her an almost girlish expression at odds with her serious demeanor. "I trust there are no hard feelings. It is unfortunate that Sergeant Stirling's extracurricular activities generated so much trouble."

The memory of Kira Stirling's sightless eyes staring up from a blood-spattered face flashed through her mind. Unfortunate. Shepard had seen some real horrors in her years, but the cool bureaucratic sterility of this place made her skin crawl. When this was over, she was going to spend a good hour between decontam and scrubbing her skin raw in the showers just to wipe off Port Hanshan's slime.

But they were ten minutes away from departure and the events to come at Peak 15 would be firmly in Shepard's world, not this one. She answered lightly. "You brought my garage pass?"

"Courtesy of Ms. Parasini." She held out a plastic ident card with an imbedded microchip. "She thanks you for your assistance and regrets you could not be present for the arrest. Parasini says she… owes you a beer?"

"You have no idea." Shepard took the card and spent a half a moment examining it. She was surprised to note that it had been made up fresh, in her name, rather than loaned out. That kind of small courtesy that made Parasini such a successful secretary, and that attention to detail likely made her a good cop. She tucked it away in her utility belt. "Can you tell me what happened up on Peak 15? My intel is still sketchy."

Kimura nodded. Apparently, Parasini's goodwill came with more than a garage pass. "Matriarch Benezia arrived shortly after Peak 15 sent up a Code Omega. It's a high-level warning indicating a catastrophic containment failure. All of our labs dealing with biological or other hazardous substances run a version of the protocol. The entire facility is placed in lockdown until the situation is rectified."

"What does the lockdown accomplish? I mean, we're talking about viruses, or radiation, or things like that. I don't think they respect a sealed hatch."

"It does more than prevent entry or exit. Power is shut off in hopes that the cold will kill off the contaminants. Obviously, this also terminates any dangerous electricity-dependent experiments that may be running."

Something about the smooth, too-practiced answer put her instincts on high alert. "Wait- no entry or exit? What about the staff at the labs when this happened? It's way too cold out there to survive without power."

"It's a big building. The cold takes time-"

"What happens if the situation isn't resolved?"

"In the event that a lab is declared a total loss, the Executive Board takes an accounting of the risk and votes whether to destroy the facility." Kimura said this with the same care and inflection as if she were discussing what she ate for breakfast.

"Destroy-"

"Orbital strike with an antimatter warhead," she supplied smoothly.

Everyone stared a moment, shocked, before the protests began. Her crew was on Kimura in an instant.

"Antimatter? How does a private facility even get a freaking antimatter warhead?!"

"There are people up there! You can't just leave them-"

"What about communications? How can you possibly know what's going on well enough to make that kind of call without real time data?"

"What the hell are you letting them do up there?"

Shepard rubbed her eyes and asked the only question that mattered. "When?"

It wasn't particularly loud but it cut across the angry ranting like an ink stain on a white tablecloth. Her crew fell silent. Kimura swallowed, delicately. "Not for a few more days."

The commander glanced at her squad. "We need to move. Get to your vehicles."

There was a flurry of salutes, nods, and "aye aye, ma'ams". She looked at the mechanic. "Li? Are we set?"

He waved his crew clear. "You're set. Spirits go with you."

She squeezed his shoulder in thanks, and headed for her Mako.

Her foot was on the step, ready to boost her into the cabin, when a flicker of motion caught her eye at the far end of the garage. She squinted against the fluorescent lighting. There it was again. It… shimmered? Like liquid metal…

The thought was barely half-formed before she remembered the geth stealth unit hanging from the wall on Therum and found her gun in her hand. "Hostiles inbound! Twelve o'clock!"

The maintenance staff wore identical looks of confusion bordering on concern, certain she'd lost her mind, but she sank behind a rolling toolbox, drew her rifle, and shot at the glint without a shred of hesitation. There was a screech of rent metal, and the geth unit leaped into view, clinging momentarily to a pillar before once again vanishing from sight.

"Two more, starboard!" Williams called out.

Garrus let off several rounds of his own. "Three on the left!"

Kimura and her agents came out of their shock and took cover, their fire joining the rest. Shepard grabbed the turian ERSC officer's arm. "Get the civilians to safety. Go!"

He nodded and scrabbled back towards the mechanics, shouting. By now the geth were returning fire and advancing steadily down the length of the garage. Shepard's assault rifle spray proved insufficient to deter them. "Liara-"

"On it." The asari threw out her hand like she was tossing a ball, and an orb of light fixed itself in the air amidst the geth, exploding outwards into a spiky ball of wavering rays maybe two meters across. The machines were lifted from their feet and drifted aimlessly under Liara's gravitational tweak.

Wrex's shotgun pumped. "Got a heavy." Again. "Might take something with a bigger bang."

Tali was crouched nearby. She sent orders to her omni-tool, her three fingers flying over the haptic keys. "Try now!"

His next shot took off the heavy's arm. He grinned. "Hah!"

On the far side of Shepard's Mako, Alenko dangled one of the hostiles in mid air and shot it methodically through the chest. After about the fourth round, the flashlight dimmed and winked out.

Shepard continued to scout for the stealth unit. She abandoned her cover and rushed ahead, crouching behind a pillar midway across the garage and hoped it was enough to the side to avoid friendly fire. Her eyes scanned the battlefield. The oily geth with its huge sticky feet left no trace. Walls, clear. Ceiling… large I-beams concealed portions. Shepard bit her lip. Where-

Before the thought was more than half-formed, there was a quiet thump directly behind her, almost too soft to hear over the gunfire, and a cool rush of air ruffled her hair.

She turned on pure instinct, already throwing her leg out, as the stealth unit straightened and began to raise its weapon to blow her brains through her face. Her heel connected solidly with its center of mass. The geth might be thrice her weight, but the blow knocked it off balance, enough for her follow-up- the butt of her rifle to its shoulder in a double-handed slam- to send it to the floor. Shepard leapt over it lightly before it could recover, knowing that without the advantage of surprise she was dead at close range.

The geth hopper got its bearings sooner than anticipated. Her bias, she supposed, used to fighting organic opponents who could not so easily shake off getting the wind knocked out of them. It stared at her intently for several infinite seconds and Shepard felt her shield blow out as whatever silent electronic command it issued overloaded her generator. There wasn't even time to curse it for using her team's tactics against her before the first round struck her back.

In one regard, she was lucky, having just started to vault a chest full of spare parts when it hit. The momentum of the high-caliber round sent her sailing forward over the box. The ground still hurt like hell when she found it with her face. The chest shuddered with the geth's next five shots but none were able to penetrate the far side of the container. Shepard licked her upper lip and tasted blood. Probably her nose. It didn't feel broken, but good and well dented.

A snarl escaped her mouth. She'd just healed up the last of her bruises. That son-of-a-bitch was hers.

The second Mako was parked beside her, with her crew firing steadily from the opposite side. A quick glance showed pockets of geth still advancing on their position, and their defensive wasn't enough to hold them back. They'd be in melee range in less than a minute. The stealth unit was only one of her immediate concerns. Without a second thought she climbed into the cab and crawled to the rear, swinging herself up behind the artillery cannon.

Makos had no periscopes. The image constructed in her viewfinder was consisted of collated data feeds from cameras mounted on the exterior, in several wavelength regimes. She could even filter in sonar if she cared to do so. From time to time she'd considered ocular implants that allowed the same superhuman vision, but it was just a little too "cyborg" for her comfort. As it was, the scope's imaging was crystal clear, and she swiveled the gun easily until the reticle circled the stealth hopper, which had taken cover on the ceiling.

She flicked the switch to the 155mm mass accelerator rounds and hit the trigger. The hopper vanished in a satisfying burst of saturated light, though a good chunk of the ceiling accompanied its remains to the ground in a tremendous crash, flooding the garage with clouds of powdered fiberboard. Smoothly, she flipped back to machine gun and swiveled the turret to the cluster of three geth troopers forcing her squad into cover and let loose.

It didn't take long to mop up after that. Her crew's efforts combined with heavy fire from the Mako made scrap of the last of the geth resistance. When the noise died, Shepard reset the gun and hopped down from the cabin, to the startled stares of half her team. She looked from one dusty face to the next, wiping at the blood from her nose. "What?"

Tali recovered first. "What happened to your face? Are you hurt?"

Shepard glanced down at her hand, smeared bright red, and tried again to tidy up. She succeeded only in spreading the blood further. Shepard gave her a sour look. "It's just one of those enthusiastic ones."

Alenko and Liara, who hadn't seen it, came running from behind the other Mako. They didn't look any worse for wear. Liara's armor was scraped down the arm, as if she'd crushed herself against a concrete pillar.

"Is everyone alright?" Liara asked. She looked at Shepard, did a double-take, and fished around her utility belt for a kleenex. "Here."

"We're fine," Wrex rumbled, and checked his heat sink. "Shepard tried to fight the geth with her face."

Shepard took the proffered tissue and pinched her wounded nose shut, ignoring the slight sting, and glanced towards the rear of the garage. The turian security guard had corralled the mechanics into a small office where they did paperwork and was standing watch at the door. Kimura and the other agent were only now crawling from their cover, staring wide-eyed and disbelieving at the scene. Shepard looked from the dead geth to the captain.

Kimura put her hand to her mouth. "Geth! On Noveria?!"

There wasn't a trace of cockiness or gloating as the commander replied. "Captain, I get that spectres and Alliance aren't the most popular people on this rock, but I don't mess around. I knock on your door when it's important. Benezia is actively aiding Saren Arterius and his geth army."

"The geth probably came in those crates she brought," Alenko reasoned. "They fold up small."

"This isn't possible. We subjected those crates to every kind of scan…" Kimura's voice faltered. She dropped her hand and licked her lips, drawing a shaky breath.

Shepard cautiously pushed a breath out her nose. No new blood trickled down her face. She set to scrubbing away the old with the remains of the kleenex and a little spit. "The odds are slim she left any at this station other than the ones here. Benezia wants to keep me from following her, not overrun Noveria. Whatever happened at Peak 15- she's here to remedy or salvage what she can. She'll need the remaining geth units up at the lab."

"Then it's true. Saren is trying to eradicate human colonies."

It was her turn to pause. It was dangerous to even hint at the reapers, because in a world where people needed to see geth with their own eyes to believe in a war, ancient machines bent on genocide lacked the ring of sanity, but Wrex was right. The Council wasn't open to this idea and she had to start somewhere. "It's more than that. The geth are only a means to an end. When he finds that end, this war will touch every corner of the galaxy."

"Unless you stop him."

She didn't answer that, but merely checked her weapons and looked back at her team. "Get to your Makos. We're losing daylight." Then, to Kimura, "Thank you. I'd take it as a favor if you could do what you can to delay the destruction of the facility."

Without waiting for a reply, she turned on her heel and got back to doing her job. The paired Makos soon disappeared into the whirling snow.

Driving through the blizzard was like being walled off in a snow globe. Visibility wasn't better than twenty meters in any direction and Port Hanshan was soon lost. The narrow strip of road wound up and down the mountainside at a sedate ten to twenty degree slope, the bulk of the mountain leering down their starboard side while to port a sheer crevasse threatened disaster with every jar and jounce. It took all of Shepard's attention to keep the Mako on the path. Blue-tinged ice coated every surface, thick and ancient, crunching beneath their six wheels. Their ears soon wearied of cracking ice and howling wind.

Red flashing beacons stood as lonely sentinels every hundred meters or so, hoisted into the gray skies by concrete bulwarks clinging to the cliffs. In theory, they marked the sharp edge of the crevasse for travelers. In a storm like this, muting their light with torrents of snow, their warnings were less than useless. Shepard's eyes grew gritty and sore from staring through the gusts. It was as though their meager convoy were utterly alone in the world. At times, it was hard to tell whether they were even moving against the monotonous landscape- until suddenly the Mako would slip sideways along a particularly smooth patch of ice and send their hearts flying into their throats.

Garrus and Alenko chatted aimlessly the first hour, for want of any other entertainment, while Liara sat in the middle of the bench with her knees drawn up to her chin. On the best of days she wasn't much of a talker. Today- well, Shepard had met corpses less silent. Her blue eyes stared into the storm and veiled her thoughts.

Shepard checked the map. "Should be coming up on the bridge. Alert Bravo Team."

"Aye aye, ma'am." On the far side of Liara, Alenko made the transmission. "Bravo Team on high alert."

"Copy." Shepard didn't know why she bothered. This entire road was nothing but one giant choke point. But if Benezia left resistance, the bridge was at least strategically traditional.

Alenko frowned. "Got something on the scanners at thirty meters out. Doesn't match any known geth signatures."

"Do we have a visual?"

Behind them, Garrus pivoted the main gun, making use of the cameras. "Some kind of vehicle- human. It's generating a lot of heat."

As they rolled closer, an overturned truck appeared through the snow. It was burning in multiple places. NDC's corporate logo was just barely legible in the flame-peeled paint. Shepard brought her Mako up alongside. "I'm ordering a full halt. I want to check this out."

"Could be bait," Alenko said doubtfully.

"That's why I'm the only one getting out." She cracked open her door and slid lightly to the ground.

The cold bit at her almost like a fire itself. Even with the suit, Shepard was soon shivering. Space turned the suit into a kind of human thermos, sealing in heat easily to the point where dumping it was more challenging than keeping it; on the surface of Noveria there was no convenient vacuum to enhance its efficiency. The flames crackled above the wind. Shielding her face from the blaze, she approached the cab and peered inside. A badly burned man slumped over the inactive controls. His forehead was decorated with a swath of dried blood from where it struck the dashboard. She'd seen enough dead men in her time to know the truth before her omni-tool scan confirmed it.

"No survivors," she radioed, for appearance's sake, and continued to circle around the truck looking for a cause. It was a vehicle designed for the ice, eight-wheeled and built low and broad. The rear hatch to the storage compartment was busted open, spilling crates of supplies onto the road, a mix of food and laboratory consumables. They were addressed to Peak 13. "Looks like a delivery to one of the other facilities."

Her excellent memory recalled the map. This road drove by Peaks 13 and 14, and dead-ended with Binary Helix's labs. She found the source of ignition. "There's a rocket lodged in the side of the truck. It got lucky and hit the power source."

Shepard snapped a picture. The rocket was in pieces, making it hard to confidently identify it as a geth munition, but that remained the smart money gamble. Wiping the hair out of her face and shielding her eyes against the wind, Shepard scanned the road forward, seeking any clue as to where it came from. She could just make out the gray bulk of the bridge with its gaping entry and sloped roof. Here, the crevasse nibbled into the road and necessitated the structure. There was no other way forward that did not involve flight.

Alenko radioed in. "Picking up electrical signatures that look like shields, ma'am."

"Blockade?" Damn it.

He affirmed the assessment, and Shepard hurried back to the Mako. Williams came on the comm. "Awaiting orders, ma'am, we're locked and loaded."

"Redirect shield power forward. We've got no room to maneuver. Any chance we can run interference on those shields?"

Tali's voice joined the rest. "We can try. Syncing to Alpha Team Mako now."

Shepard glanced aft, towards Garrus at the gun controls. "We come in fast and hard. As soon as the shields are gone, I'm running into the bridge to give Bravo Team room to fire."

He nodded. "I'll be ready."

She gunned the engine without further comment. They flew towards the bridge as fast as she dared on the treacherous ground. The barricade swam into view, the snow parting like a veil with their forward motion; ten or more geth arrayed behind hexagonal grids of dark energy, just barely betrayed by shimmering arcs of blue where the byproducts of their generation sizzled in a froth of ordinary matter. The shields went down seconds before her Mako collided with the line.

The tank lurched as it rode over a pair of geth and listed towards the port wall. NDC lined the open side of the bridge with rectangular plates of translucent plastic affixed to metal rods, keeping out the snow but rotating with the wind to keep from shattering. Shepard didn't give good odds the flimsy arrangement would hold if the tank crashed against it. Concrete pillars spaced regularly held the poles and the roof. Starboard, partially carved into the mountain, was a small waystation not large enough to drive through. What commanded her attention most, however, was the second line of geth some ten meters ahead.

In the fraction of a second it took for her to scan the terrain, a succession of shots hit the Mako, mostly heavy gunfire but at least one artillery shell rocked the vehicle. Garrus answered with a salvo of his own before switching to the machine gun while the cannon cooled. "Shepard! Forward!"

"I see them," she growled, turning the tank hard left. "Shields!"

Alenko, linked with Tali's algorithm, flailed at the instruments. It wasn't quite enough time; they were thrown forward as the vehicle impact absorbed the last of the shielding. Liara, blank-faced, simply reached above her for one of the handholds.

Shepard threw the Mako into reverse and executed a ninety-degree turn. Their rear smacked squarely against one of the support pillars. There was an audible gasp over the comm from Bravo Team, but Shepard put the tank exactly where she intended. They were now facing down the line of geth defenders.

She stomped the accelerator.

Some of them managed to scramble out of the way before the tank ran them down, but the maneuver was so unexpected, most simply turned and shot at them. That was satisfying. Apparently, even geth programming had a discernable reaction time to adapt to a new situation. The machines crumpled beneath her wheels. Garrus gave up firing at their line and turned his attention towards the aft bridge, assisting Bravo Team with the first line as Shepard chased down the stragglers with her vehicular assault. Stray shots exploded against the windows, concrete, and mountain, leaving craters and sprays of debris scattered across the bridge. Someone was going to have a hell of a time cleaning up.

When at last the shot faded, only the two Makos remained functional. Shepard calmly spoke into the comm. "Status report."

"Shields holding at 93%. Rear Cameras 3 and 4 not responding," Alenko relayed. His look was reproachful. "I think they were crushed when you rammed the support."

Tali also responded. "Shields at 97%. No structural damage."

"Roger. Tali, is it worth hopping out to examine these geth units?"

"Negative, Shepard. They'll have been wiped by now."

Shepard was tempted to take a look around anyway. Maybe it was that the bridge was sheltered from the storm and her eyes were getting the first rest they'd had in hours. But now that Benezia almost certainly knew they were coming, they were working with borrowed time. She resumed rolling forward. "Copy that. Move out."

Shortly after the bridge, they entered a series of treacherous switchbacks that left barely enough room for a single vehicle on the road. At times, several centimeters of their portside wheels were left dangling over the edge. The caravan slowed to a crawl. The dangerous confines lent special charm to the discovery that Benezia had dropped mobile turrets onto the cliffs above them. Luckily, those same circumstances prevented the guns from establishing good line of sight, and Garrus' superior aim managed to disable the turret before it could do any real damage.

The turret did manage to mangle a section of the road. Shepard didn't trust the broken, slushy churn of ice to hold their weight, and was left with the unfortunate choice of using the retrorocket to sail over the gap. It wreaked similar havoc on the ice beneath them, and though she cut it off before they landed, the Mako still skidded alarmingly on contact. Two of the wheels revolved on air before she managed to steady it.

She let out a slow breath and rolled forward to give the second Mako plenty of clearance. They now had a longer jump, and the snow was picking up. "In your own time, Bravo Team. Don't rush it."

Liara turned her head towards Alenko and spoke for the first time in hours. "Let me out."

The look he gave her in return was dubious, and concerned. "It won't work. It's too heavy."

"It's worth a try." What her voice lacked in intonation it made up for with implacability.

He let out a breath and budged open the hatch, shaking his head. They tumbled onto the ice. Shepard scooted along the bench after them. "Does someone want to tell me-"

Bravo Team activated their retrorocket. The words died on her lips.

It was clear from the start that the trajectory was flawed. An unfortunate gust of wind pushed the Mako further sideways, while shoving Alpha Team into the side of their vehicle, between them and the crevasse. The airborne tank had no thrusters to correct for the drift. Shepard felt her stomach contract into a hard ball. "They're not going to make it."

Several things happened very quickly. Liara grabbed Alenko's hand. The Mako hit the ice with a heavy thud, leftmost half almost entirely off the path, and began to list over the side. The asari flung out her remaining arm, fingers spread to their full span, and with tenuous, aching slowness, the fall was arrested.

Half the tank sat on empty air limned in blue light. Liara's lips were pressed so thin they were shuddering, and her large eyes didn't blink. Thought it couldn't have lasted more than a second in real time the instant seemed to stretch thin into eternity.

Then the Mako's wheels roared as they tried to find purchase on the blue-shot ground, throwing up chips of ice as they bit into the road with desperation and hauled the vehicle forward. Once it found its grip its speed became prodigious; Shepard scrambled back as it rammed the rear of the first Mako and nearly ran over her toes.

The instant the sixth wheel was on firm ground Liara dropped her hand and fell to her knees, gasping in great gulps of air. Alenko staggered back, massaging his forehead and cursing. "Owww. Holy fuck. You could have warned me."

Liara was lost to a coughing fit. When she recovered, she wiped her mouth. "I'm sorry. I thought I did."

He leaned back against the side of the tank and shut his eyes, groaning. "Shit."

Shepard looked between them. "What just happened?"

"A Mako possesses extraordinary mass." Liara managed to straighten. "I couldn't hold it unassisted."

Shepard hadn't realized biotics could combine strength like that. Maybe Alenko hadn't either, judging by his surprise and assertion that her attempt was due to failure, though clearly that hadn't inhibited Liara's ability to form whatever connection she required. Shepard hated not having strategically relevant information; hated that when it came to biotics she didn't even know which questions to ask. Instead, she activated her comm link. "Is everyone ok in there?"

Williams was shaken, but coherent. "Yes, ma'am. We're in one piece."

"Good." For once, Shepard didn't bother to hide her relief beneath professionalism. If Ash and Tali and Wrex went over that cliff- she wasn't entirely sure of her reaction, but it would have been severe. She let out a breath. "This is a hell of a long road. Switch out drivers and keep going. We need to make Peak 15 by nightfall."

Shepard gave her Mako to Garrus and took over the gun, while Liara slid into the navigator's seat to allow Alenko some time to try to clear the stars from his eyes. The asari's draw on his ability sent him straight into the throes of a savage headache. Slowly, gaining traction against the incline, they rolled out.

They were climbing now, winding their way across the face of the mountain. Shepard never understood the custom of naming mountains; with the exception of certain kinds of volcano, mountains were not distinct, not individual. Every so-called mountain was nothing more than a particularly high ridge or peak. She rather liked the NDC custom of naming the range and numbering the features. The road they traveled was carved out by explosives and hard labor when Port Hanshan was founded, barely more than a scrape along the granite monstrosity of Skadi, but it gave some meager shelter from the winds Shepard saw high above the port a day prior. She was certain they never could have made it subject to those gusts.

They passed more turrets along the way, and more burnt-out vehicles. Clearly Benezia had no intention of being followed. They found additional geth as well, when they reached the second bridge, and dispatched them with more accumulated wear on their vehicles. NDC had not scrimped on their equipment, for which Shepard was grateful, but her team had to be lucky every time. Benezia's only needed to find a weak point in their multi-layered shielding once. Shepard wasn't about to give her the opportunity.

It concerned her that she was framing the coming conflict in such personal terms. It was Saren's army they fought, not Benezia personally, but it was hard not to hold her accountable for this pocket portion of the war. It was hard not to lust after a solid, identifiable, flesh-and-blood target even with Liara sitting not two meters from her. There was a strong thirst for retribution, to make some pay for what had occurred these last months in the Traverse, and it didn't matter whose mother she was.

And it should. It should matter that Benezia was bewitched, or indoctrinated, or whatever you cared to call it; it should matter that she undoubtedly knew things that could help turn the tide; hell, it should matter that she was influential in the asari government and her unsubstantiated demise could be painful for the Systems Alliance. But none of it did. The impulse belonged to the darker thoughts of that same part of her that found intimidating guards quality entertainment. That part knew geth couldn't pay tribute for their crimes in blood, that silicon didn't splinter and machinery couldn't scream.

Shepard was deeply discomfited knowing that was inside her, at the same time knowing that it was also what moved her hand when everyone else around her was struck with horror or burdened with fear. This ability to step outside empathy and see the whole gory thing as just another score-keeping exercise defended her every bit as much as her armor and her training. Another reason she'd wanted out. Things were easier when she could still believe the terrible things she did were to protect her people, but as the years dragged on and not a damn thing seemed to change for more than five minutes, faith that it meant anything was in short supply. It wasn't that she didn't recognize herself in the mirror each morning; it was that she knew her reflection all too well.

It was quite cold inside the Mako despite environmental controls. The chill of this planet seeped through every seam. Shepard licked at her chafed lips. "How much further?"

"We're coming up on the second bridge," Liara reported. "From there, the road should widen and give us a clear path to Peak 15. A few hours, perhaps."

Shepard checked the time. They would cutting it close to sundown. Garrus said, "Maybe we should bivouac in the waystation, wait until morning."

"No. We're not giving them another night to finish what they started."

"We may not have a choice. Geth are hard to fight in the dark." They all knew that out here, it would be an absolute dark. The only lights were the dull red beacons lining the road.

"We keep moving," Shepard said firmly. "That's an order."

Garrus snorted, his disagreement plain. "We're not going to be much good for anything when we get there."

"Pull over at the bridge. We'll switch out again. I'll take us in."

Alenko, whose headache had faded from stabbing to a dull ache, spoke up. "I can take a shift, if you want."

Shepard chuckled in spite of the awful weariness that came from traveling in a bumpy tank all day. "No. I've seen you drive. You can have the gun or relieve Liara on nav, your pick."

Though another ambush at the bridge was expected, either Benezia was running out of troops or was confident in her earlier measures, because there was nothing but empty road. Each tank rotated its personnel, but Shepard felt the need to stretch her legs a few minutes, and called a brief rest. Several of her team went to explore the waystation- or at least enjoy its brief warmth. The commander instead elected to wander ahead of the caravan, to the end of the bridge where snow gathered in deep drifts, caught against the supports.

She leaned against one and folded her arms, staring out into the mountains, taking a deep breath of the cold clean air. They were at significant altitude and breath got thinner with every mile, or so it felt. Then something caught her eye, a smudge of gray and orange at the limits of her sight. Curious, she walked a bit down the road.

Two Makos lay there, tumbled over each other like broken toys, one lying on its roof. Both were ablaze. Unlike the truck and other vehicles they'd passed, it was a trickle of flame, as there was only fuel from the retrorocket to burn. It wavered above the overturned tank, a sad banner of defeat.

Scattered about them were geth chassis, maybe ten or fifteen in all, interspersed with several very human looking corpses, burnt as they fled. Shepard knelt by the nearest and rolled the body over. The remains of his eyes stared up into the sky framed by an ERCS headset. She sat back on her heels and draped her arms over her legs, thoughtful. So. Anoleis did send a team to investigate. He wasn't covering for Saren, or Binary Helix. He was covering his own inability to contain the situation. Shepard shook her head. What a bloody waste.

Li hadn't mentioned it. Oddly enough she was more bothered by that than all the rest. She'd thought him the only honest one in the lot.

Static burst at her ear, the storm playing merry hell with their comm system. Alenko. "Commander, we're ready to move, on your order."

Polite way of saying they were waiting for her to return. She squinted at the cliffs rising to the right, searching for the turret. "I'm just past the bridge. Move up. We've got some business to address."

Then, as she found it, she added, "Carefully. There's a turret about fifteen meters ahead and ten up."

She wasn't large enough to trip its sensors into action. Prudently, before her Makos could come into view, she moved back against the cliff and out of the line of fire.

The first tank emerged with its gun already sniffing at the wind. The turret spun in its moorings instantly. They fired simultaneously as their instruments found each other and established a hard lock.

The turret's salvo was first to arrive, going wide of its target and blowing a crater into the miniature battlefield at Shepard's feet. The pressure front, somewhat greater than the wind but less than required to do injury, felt incredible as it knocked her back like the shove of a giant hand. Her back smacked against the mountain and knocked her to her knees. Some of the geth were mangled by the plasma shot, while others were tossed into the air. One struck the mountain not far from Shepard's position. Bits of dirt and chips of ice from the blast sprayed over her in a tide, stinging cheeks numbed by cold and forcing her to shield her eyes with her arm.

Shepard found the turret again just in time to watch it crumble on itself, shedding shrapnel all the way down the cliff and onto the road. The sight made her smile. It was a clever strategy, sending disposable synthetics against irreplaceable flesh-and-blood, but it wasn't working.

She swung up into the Mako, Garrus scooting over to make room, and adjusted the controls to suit her. "It's not long now."

Alenko shifted at the gun behind her. "What's the plan when we arrive?"

"We assess the situation, and then…" She let out a breath. "And then we find Benezia and get some answers."

Liara checked her display, her mouth thin and tight. "My mother has great strength. Shiala shook off Saren's control. We don't know what Benezia is doing at the labs."

Garrus glanced at her. "Saren let Shiala go. It's not the same."

"Let her be," Shepard said before it could go any further. Who cared if she was trying to protect Liara for as long as that remained possible? What was wrong with that? None of this was Liara's fault. She'd asked for none of it, no more than the colonists of Feros or Eden Prime.

Shepard cleared her throat and modulated her tone to something less sharp. "We have no way of knowing the tenor of Benezia's present relationship with Saren. I won't entertain speculation. It wastes time."

Liara looked up. "There it is."

A break in the snow allowed them a glimpse of Peak 15 across the crevasse, though they'd have to wind around its small end before they could reach it. The road dead-ended in a steel trap of a door where shuttles would deliver people and supplies on less stormy days. Above the door, peeking between the sheets of blue-gray ice, were thick paned windows, an expensive extravagance. There was not the slightest sign of activity through any of it.

After miles of climbing the path actually began to descend, at a gentle pace, towards the entrance to Binary Helix's laboratory. While Peak 15 sat well above them, plucking at the passing clouds, the facility built into the mountain had its garage at road level. The last rays of sunlight disappeared behind the peak about thirty minutes before they reached it, and there were precious few half-hours of Shepard's life she wouldn't rather relive. The Mako's lights were damn near useless in these conditions and they were forced to drive by ladar scan alone. It was a relief to finally kill the engine and step out into the dark, rifle in hand.

The huge steel bay door was firmly shut. There was no exterior terminal evident. Shepard looked at her squad. "Spread out. Find a way in."

Their flashlights formed small islands in the night as they examined the mountainside and the small circle that was the last of the road. There were no signs of geth. It wasn't more than a few minutes before Williams called out. "Ma'am, you need to see this."

Shepard headed towards her voice, trailed by much of the remainder of the team. Wavering in the cold light were three corpses, all human, wearing tattered uniforms identifying them as members of the laboratory staff, probably assigned to the garage. They were tumbled over each other, as though they'd fled together and been caught together. She wondered what could make people run to certain death by freezing. What was worse?

She knelt beside the nearest of the bodies and touched its clothes, carefully. "These tears… I don't recognize them. It's not knife work."

Wrex sniffed at the air. "Looks almost like some kind of animal."

Alenko glanced at her. "That mechanic did say Noveria has savage wildlife."

"Wildlife we've seen no sign of all day." Shepard brushed her fingers over the ground. "Fresh snow, and no marks that aren't ours. No pieces missing from the bodies. What kind of creature ignores fresh meat sitting free for the taking?"

"These were people, ma'am," Williams corrected harshly.

"All flesh is the same to an animal," Shepard replied mildly and glanced at the door. "The garage was shut behind them. Someone's still alive in there."

Garrus' mandibles flared. "Under Benezia's control."

"Maybe." She straightened. "Someone scan the usual frequencies. See if we can pick up anything."

"On it," Tali said, fiddling with her omni-tool. "Most of the computer systems are off-line."

Alenko squatted next to the third corpse and lifted something off its neck. "Ident badge. Could be useful."

He passed it to her. Shepard weighed it in her hand. The young woman pictured was dark-haired and smiling. The young woman in the snow had a face too savaged by claws to tell any expression.

Wrex rose and wandered towards the far end of the bay door. "Over here. There's a smaller hatch."

Shepard reached the door and slid the badge through the scanner. "At least the security systems are still online."

The interior of the garage was a velvety black, and nearly as cold as the air outside. Shepard raised her light but it lacked the strength to illuminate much of the room. The floor was bare concrete and crates of all manner lay scattered about it, abandoned in place when the… whatever it was hit the facility.

Liara followed her through the door. "Logically, if you're trying to contain a loose experiment, security is the very last system that would be shut off. It will stay online until they run out of power completely."

"And how long will that take?"

"Each facility on Noveria will have its own reactor. So, years to decades depending on how much maintenance it requires to avoid tripping the fail safes."

"Alright. So the power didn't go out. Somebody shut it down. From Port Hanshan or here?"

Alenko tried a light switch. Nothing happened. "Did NDC look like the kind of place that exercises a lot of oversight?"

Shepard acknowledged the point. "So from inside Peak 15. That means we can turn it back on. That's our first priority. Once the computers are online, they can tell us where in this maze Benezia is hiding."

Liara began to make some response, but a distant screech, high-pitched and not like anything from any human throat, sang through the garage. The echoes took half an eternity to die. The asari glanced around, eyes wide, her voice a harsh whisper. "What was that?"

There was a second screech, shorter, less a cry and more a call, raising the hair on the back of her neck. Shepard's finger twitched against her trigger, not enough to fire.

Williams spun slowly, pointing her rifle at shadows. "Think it's what got them outside?"

"Yes," said Wrex, settling his shotgun in his hands. "They're hunting."

Shepard refused to be unnerved. "Tali, can we record a sample and try to match it to something? I want to know what the hell these creatures are."

The quarian nodded. She snapped her attention to Liara. "Where's the power junction?"

Liara pulled open a map she'd downloaded before leaving the port. "Binary Helix built the lab in sevaral parts. The main systems are all on this side, along with a few light-duty labs. The primary scientific facilities as well as security are located in auxiliary sites, accessed via tramway."

"Power is on this side?"

"Yes. Here." Liara placed a waypoint on her map. "Next to the server room for all the station-wide computer systems."

Another screech, and another answering, high-pitched hisses in the night. Their breath was loud, harsh, in the following silence, and they crowded a bit closer together in the meager flashlight. Shepard shot Alenko a glance, who jerked his head at Garrus, the two began a slow patrol around the front of the garage, searching for the source. Wrex calmly continued looking over his weapon. Liara crowded closer to Williams, who kept her rifle held high, searching for a target.

Shepard's eyes flicked from the direction of the noise to Tali. "Anything?"

"Nothing in the databases I can access."

Garrus and Alenko finished their circuit and reported in. "Nothing but dust and snow, ma'am."

"Alright." Shepard grew tired of waiting in the dark like nervous children. "We make for the power junction. If anything moves, shoot it. We can solve this mystery with dead animals just as easily as live."

They found a stairwell at the far end of the garage. A placard above the hatch read "Central Station". Shepard advanced steadily, more determined than cautious. A few rogue nightmares conjured by Binary Helix's experiments weren't about to frighten her off. The stairs gave way to a glass tube of an airlock, to allow the attached security station to verify all visitors as well as prevent contaminants from entering the lab space. Within the tube were two portable turrets, thankfully not geth technology, pointed towards the inner hatch.

The sight gave Liara pause. "Why are the turrets pointed the wrong way?"

Nobody wanted to answer. They stared at walls while Shepard swiped the stolen card and worked to override the permissions from within the tube. Liara glanced around in growing confusion. At last Alenko licked his lips and stated, simply, "They want to keep their own people in as much as others out."

Her blue eyes grew very round. "That's horrifying."

The hatch opened at last. Shepard consulted the map on the wall and turned towards the elevator, grimly. "It's going to get worse from here."

They piled into the carriage, a bit cramped, and as they ascended the lights began to flicker. Emergency power was failing. The thought sat like a stone in Shepard's stomach. This wasn't a space station with their ship docked right outside, or a facility on a broad open plain; this was a mountain with hard-locked hatches. If the power died completely, they'd be stuck a long time, unless NDC's antimatter warhead obliterated them sooner.

Nothing to be done about it. What was that stupid saying of her mother's, when she had some unpleasant task or other- no way out but forward. No point in dwelling on it. The power would hold until they reached the power junction because there was no other option.

The elevator poured them out into a hallway curving around the mountain face, high above the road, the outer wall made of a glass so thick it distorted the view. The floor, ceiling, and inner wall were all bare rock swathed in a rich frosting of snow, ice, and furry frost. A bit of a draft swept the ground clean and caused whispers of snow to play about her ankles. Her breath fogged out before her. In the distance ahead there was a trickle of water, the only sound.

Shepard paused at the next hatch, listening a moment, the water growing louder, echoing as though from a much larger chamber. She motioned for her squad to be ready, and tagged open the door, jogging forward several steps quite quickly and sweeping her eyes over the room.

They were in an office, split in two levels, with a multi-story spacious meeting area to the front and small conference rooms upstairs and down lining the back wall, hidden behind a partition. Heavy windows looked out over the valley. With night fallen outside, they seemed to merely add depth to the darkness. Snow lay here and there in the corners and where the walls met the floor, and icicles dangled, dripping, from heating ducts. With the power outage there wasn't much air moving through the system. A single strip of emergency lighting glowed faintly up the ramp to the second story.

The place was in chaos.

Tables and chairs lay in tumbled piles, tops gouged and cushions slashed. Datapads, terminals, and paperwork covered the floor like large bits of confetti with darkened screens. But the worst part was the bodies. There were no Binary Helix staff, at least not in the area nearest the hatch, but there were several krogan bearing expressions of frozen surprise and the same coloring as all the others Shepard had seen in Saren's employ. Blood pooled at the seams of their armor and gathered on the floor. There were also several varieties of geth chassis, the framework rent and scratched.

Shepard stared at the scene with disbelief and not a little surprise. Saren sent his people to contain the situation, not be slaughtered by it. These weren't untrained staffers. "What the hell happened here?"

Wrex turned over a krogan corpse with his boot. The visible flesh was covered in slashes and puckered puncture wounds, but that wasn't what immediately attracted Shepard's attention. All down the right half of the body, seamless between flesh and armor, was a large molted burn. In the worst places the flesh ran like candlewax; in others it exposed the lines of bone and muscle in stark relief. The armor it touched was a mushy mess of fused nylon webbing tangled about scarred ceramic plates.

A hush came over the squad. Liara turned away, in the quiet but almost inexpressibly horrified way she had, while the others by turn swallowed or cursed beneath their breath. For her part, Shepard merely looked from the corpse to Wrex, steadily. He shook his head. "I don't know. These are natural wounds, save for the burn."

"Acid, maybe." She sat back on her heels. "Hard to believe it'd be flame in a place like this."

A hiss came out of the darkness beyond their pool of flashlight. It was followed by a soft, querying cry and the scrabbling of something sharp and hard on the stone floor. As she listened, soft chittering, closer at hand, and yet more subtle movement whispered through the room. Whatever the escaped experiments were, they sounded quite large. One of the high-octave hisses sounded almost like alien laughter.

Williams swallowed, audibly. "Orders, ma'am?"

It was so cold frost was forming on her hard suit. Shepard gave up wondering over the dead krogan. "We need the power back, but I won't be flanked by these… creatures." That word she almost spat, with utter disdain. "We go room by room until we find our way. Spread out."

Her team forged ahead through the blackout. Wrex lingered over the strange wounds a few moments further. "These are precise, the mark of a strong predator. So were the ones outside. This thing knows what it's doing."

"Things," Shepard corrected. "There's at least two hiding here, maybe more."

"Pack hunter," Wrex speculated. "I don't know anything could take out a squad of krogan alone and still fit in this room."

Shepard didn't want to admit he was likely correct. "No ideas?"

"I've never seen anything like this." He rolled his shoulder, confused and irritated. "But it feels familiar. Like maybe something I saw in a vid. I don't know, Shepard."

A yell interrupted her questions, torn not from any throat but edged with familiar turian flanging. Then she heard Alenko curse, reflexively, and the steady rat-tat-tat of rifle fire.

Shepard sprinted up the ramp. They were at significant altitude, it was colder than the void's own vastness, and she was easily carrying thirty kilos of gear between her armor and armaments. But she'd trained in worse, and she could haul some serious ass when it was required. She skidded around the corner and slid into the small meeting room that was the source of all the commotion.

Her first impression was of a giant shrimp, but far more menacing. The dull red creature's segmented body rose perhaps as high as her waist but twice as long. It stood on four segmented legs and waved another, stunted pair at its assailants. Two miniscule eyes graced its curved head ending in a mess of feelers, and a twin pair of long, pincered tentacles whipped about it, defending its airspace.

Green acid dripped from its hissing maw and made tiny impact craters on the floor. The hail of bullets was keeping it at bay, but not driving it back. They seemed to do the thick carapace little damage. As soon as Alenko overloaded his heat sink it was all over.

So Shepard did the first thing that came to mind, and charged the animal with a wild yell of her own.

She ducked between the tentacles and shoved the heel of her boot hard into its face. Something crunched beneath it. The shrimp-like insect let out a hideous shriek and tried to draw back, but she kept pace. The kick was followed by a stout punch to the side of its head. It reared in anger and agony and tried to spit acid into her face, and she fought to keep its mouth away while its legs scrabbled against her armor and the pincers sought a place to wound, winding about her.

The rifle clattered to the ground. Her gloved hands pressed against its neck, straining, her face turned away from that gaping mouth. "Little help here?"

Alenko was trying to shoot at it without hitting her. "It doesn't seem to care!"

Footsteps in the hall, Wrex catching up and the rest attracted to the commotion. Shepard twisted desperately to put the creature between herself and them. "Fire!"

Nobody needed to be told twice. She felt the impact of their various attacks through the body of her assailant. It thrashed its death, scoring her armor with long scrapes and dressing the wall over her shoulder in its corrosive saliva. It was all she could do to hold on- but she knew letting go would mean almost certain injury.

At last it slumped against her, all the life gone from it, and she staggered beneath its weight. With a great heave she shoved it off onto the floor.

Williams' eyes were so wide she could see the whites all the way around. "What the FUCK is that thing?!"

Shepard didn't have the faintest idea. She reclaimed her rifle from where it fell to the floor, the sweat already freezing on her brow. "Something new." Her eyes swept the squad. "Where's Garrus? I heard him yell."

Alenko gulped a breath, let it out, and leaned against the wall shaking his head. "I don't know. He was here, and then it was here, and then… I don't know."

There was a pile of refuse in the corner, half-hidden beneath a fallen display terminal. She kicked it aside and saw the hole. "They've burrowed through the floor. Move!"

The team made for the ramp. Shepard didn't bother, but vaulted over the railing directly, rolling out of the fall. Liara followed her rather more delicately, shrouded in a pale blue glow until her feet lightly touched the ground. They were first to reach the conference room directly below.

Garrus was barricaded behind an overturned table while another of the creatures lashed at him. It was so fierce in its assault that he could hardly poke his eyes over the lip, much less get off a round.

"Liara," Shepard said, raising her rifle.

The asari threw out a singularity, pulling the creature from its feet to leave it dangling helpless in midair. Shepard took her time in placing the shot, waiting for its writhing to expose the softer underbelly she'd noticed while grappling its friend. The barrage ripped it open from throat to bottom, and the resulting deluge of gore put pale to most of Shepard's memories. The stench alone did not bear description.

"Goddess," Liara gasped, covering her mouth and nose, gagging.

Shepard's eyes were watering. "If this is what Saren wanted, I can believe he means to take over the galaxy."

Garrus rose slowly, similarly disgusted but unwilling to pay it any attention. "Thanks."

"Don't mention it." She shook her head and stalked from the room. "I like this place less and less-"

Not two meters from the doorway, Wrex's giant boot came down on something blackish green, the size of a cat but with far more legs. It splat. Bits of slime dotted Shepard's lower legs. "What the hell?"

"Dunno." He lifted his foot and peered at the remains, what little there was. "Makes my nose itch."

"It's acid," Garrus clarified, coming up behind Shepard. "Better wipe your shoe."

Liara speculated, "A larval stage, perhaps."

Shepard scowled. "With a few dozen of these things, Saren could lay waste to most colonies. God knows how many are here."

"That's not going to happen," Garrus said firmly.

"No," she said, with real rancor. "It's not."

Shepard turned on her heel and swept by her team as she headed deeper into the labs, leaving them to scramble in her wake.

They traveled down long hallways, some brushing the night sky with windows, others buried within the mountain. The occasional echoed hiss or screech kept them sharp, though they encountered no more of the strange creatures along their way. Liara kept a watchful eye on her map and offered direction when necessary. Eventually, they emerged into a larger room, if anything colder than the halls but free of ice and snow. It was lined with enormous, and silent, power junctions. Thin strips of emergency lighting, dimmed as the reserves ran low, lined a central path towards the back of the room and flickered against the shadows.

Shepard glanced around for the switch but found nothing. "Where do we start?"

Tali'Zorah was looking over Liara's shoulder, pointing. "The main reactor should be here. However, we'll never be able to bring it back online without the system VI. The security protocols alone would take days to crack."

"Is there enough power left in the labs for a VI?"

Alenko held up his omni-tool to a power junction and took a reading. He frowned. "There's no residual power left in any of these. They've been down a long time, a week at least. But the VI should have an auxiliary power source, if it was designed correctly. We just need to find it."

"Shepard," Garrus said, drawing her attention to the rear hatch. Beyond it was a circular room enclosing a ring of dead server banks.

"That looks like a VI to me," she said. "Let's get it back."

They hurried into the room, which was somewhat cramped with all seven of them crowded around the servers. A small platform elevator waited in the middle of the cluster. Tali stepped onto it. "I need somebody to find that power supply."

"On it," Alenko said, beginning an examination of the room's perimeter. Tali descended into the VI hardware. The tube filled with faint orange light as she interfaced her omni-tool with the server access terminal.

"You need to bypass automatic safety protocols," she called up. "This shutdown wasn't due to lack of electricity. Somebody wanted this to happen."

Shepard grimaced. "Probably went with the Code Omega. Binary Helix wouldn't want any of their data to survive to be picked up by NDC or a competitor."

"They haven't wiped the drives," Tali reported.

That was a piece of luck. Shepard shot a glance to Alenko, crouched beside a unit affixed to the wall. "Faster would be better."

"Giving it all I got, ma'am. They hardwired the response with an FPGA and locked it down afterwards. I've never seen a setup like this." He sounded torn between aggravation and admiration of their cleverness.

Shepard was merely aggravated. "The hell is an FP-"

"Programmable hardware," Tali supplied from her cave. "Don't ask. Kaidan, can you isolate the chip physically?"

"Yeah, just let me pull out my portable soldering kit," he replied sarcastically.

"You know what I mean."

"It'll be faster to crack the lock. Just give me another minute."

The requested sixty seconds passed impatiently, Shepard tapping her foot all the while and trying not to pace. Just as she was about to prod things along, the server indicator lights lit up in a blue-and-orange constellation of LEDs and the computers came to life with a great whoosh of intake air.

Tali made a pained sound. "The shutdown corrupted some of the essential files. I need to make repairs from backups."

Garrus had wandered nearer to Alenko. "I'm not reading a lot of power here. We don't have much time."

"Damn it, I need this VI online." Shepard pushed past him, assessing the meter. "Can we feed it power from something else? One of the suits, maybe?"

Each hard suit had a small eezo-based generator mounted on the back that supplied shielding as well as power for recording biometric information, and circulating oxygen when required. Alenko clearly thought her mad. "Sure, the cabling ports are all the same, but it doesn't have that kind of juice. The transfer would drain it completely. It would have to be replaced later."

Shepard sat down next to the power unit. "Do it."

He gave her a look of utter disbelief. "Commander, your shielding _will not function. _It's too big a risk."

She shook her head. "If we don't get that reactor started, it's all over. There's no other way to reach Benezia."

"Ma'am-"

"I gave you an order," she interrupted smoothly with more than a touch of frost.

He couldn't hold her tempered glare, but instead gave an exasperated sigh and snagged an appropriate cable, and muttered too low for anyone else to hear. "If you die, I'm leaving your body here for those things to eat."

"No you won't," she said without a trace of worry. A smile tugged at her mouth.

Alenko plugged her in and tapped a few commands into the console. "How do you know?"

"Because between the two of us, I'm the one with the reputation for leaving people behind." The joke came out before she knew she was going to say it. It left her somewhat startled. She didn't know that she'd ever cracked a joke about Akuze before, at least not one like that, but she wasn't sorry for it.

A spot the size of her spread palm heated on her back as the power draw rose to maximum. Alenko spared her a very dry glance. "And I'm the one who stupidly stands between girls and their mistakes."

"Please. You stand at the back and throw blue shit around." But she was smiling as she spoke. "Who's the one who saved your ass from the giant acid-breathing lobster?"

Tali, working furiously down in the pit, yelled up. "I've almost got it- there!"

A projection pad a quarter of the way round the room hummed to life, bearing the image of a pink-gridded, animated woman with blank eyes and a pleasant smile. "Greetings. I am Mira. It looks like you are trying to restore this facility. Would you like help?"


	37. Chapter 37

The VI named Mira had a pleasant look, designed to be perfectly average in all ways, a sympathetic front into which to pour one's inquiries. Studies had proven people were far less likely to express anger at a VI's inherent limitations if it presented itself as a colleague- hence the rather expensive projection systems.

"Status report," Shepard ordered, concisely ignoring all of the carefully rendered design intended to make her feel a human connection to a complicated piece of software.

But a VI couldn't begin to care. Its virtual expression glazed over momentarily as it accessed the requisite information. "One moment please. Diagnostics in progress… Critical failure. Reactor shutdown in accordance with emergency containment procedures. Manual restart required. Critical failure. Landline connections are disabled. Passenger tram systems are offline. Report complete."

The reactor problem seemed straightforward. It was, however, the first time Shepard had heard the term "landline". "What are the landlines are why are they disconnected?"

Mira intoned blandly, "The landlines connect my mainframes here at Central Station to the various subfacilities of Peak 15. This allows personnel to remotely access my databases from the comfort and security of their labs. The cabling is automatically ejected under emergency protocols."

Shepard glanced at Liara. "Where are these 'landline cables' located?"

The asari searched her map hastily. "They appear to connect to the main systems on the roof of the operations center. The access elevator isn't far."

"Alright." The commander crossed her arms and paced a few steps, before looking back at Mira. "Tell me what happened here."

"I require a more specific inquiry."

Shepard rethought her phrasing, modifying it for the literal logic of a VI. "Tell me what happened immediately before you were shut down."

"Identity unknown. Please authenticate before proceeding."

"Commander Shepard, Citadel Special Tactics and Reconnaissance."

"One moment please… Council authority confirmed. Processing previous inquiry…" The VI tilted its head and recited the warnings monotonously. "Stage I Alert issued at hot labs. Contaminants released from Laboratory Pod Gamma. Emergency protocols implemented."

"Contaminants," Wrex spat. "She must mean those things we fought off."

Mira continued without break. "Stage II Alert issued at hot labs. Tube breached. Tram shut down. Landlines to hot labs ejected. Stage III Alert issued locally. Contaminants in tram tunnels. Facility shutdown and evacuation initiated. Code Omega sent."

"Great," Alenko said. "So we can look forward to more overgrown shellfish on the tram."

Shepard doubted her much-touted Council authority would buy her an ID on the hostiles, but asked the question anyway. "Can you tell me about the contaminants?"

"I'm sorry, Commander," Mira said, and to her programmers' credit, the regret sounded nearly real. "Inquiries into our research require privileged access. Only Binary Helix executives possess that level of clearance."

She gave it another shot. "What about Matriarch Benezia? Can you tell me her whereabouts?"

"Lady Benezia departed on the passenger tramway to the Rift Station subsidiary labs. User Alert: The tram system is currently inoperable."

Shepard sat back on her heels. "Benezia crossed over to the hot labs and shut everything down. Why?"

"So we couldn't follow her?" Garrus suggested. "Maybe she wasn't worried about the Code Omega or the antimatter strike, as long as she got what she needed."

Tali tilted her head. "What did she need? It's not like she could take an army of… contaminants with her, not without help."

"When we find her, we'll ask." Shepard focused on their more immediate problems. "We need those landlines to hook the VI into Rift Station, and we need the generator to power the tram. Anyone know anything about nuclear reactors?"

Mira interjected, "I am available to walk untrained personnel through the relevant procedure to restore functionality."

"Wonderful." Shepard pointed at her squad. "Alpha Team will see to the landlines on the roof. Bravo Team, the reactor's all yours. Maintain radio contact and rendezvous here when we're done."

Williams saluted. "Aye aye, ma'am. See you on the other side."

Bravo Team departed for the reactor. Shepard turned to her squad. "About that roof access point, Liara?"

She nodded. "Follow me."

Three more of the escaped creatures waited for them on the roof, along with a good dozen of the larvae. The latter left pools of acidic offal wherever they fell. Shepard wondered if they'd ever entirely rid themselves of the stink. She scraped her boot off best she could.

Alenko shoved the last of the remains away from the landlines console. "So, what, they can operate elevators now?"

"We already knew they could open doors," she noted grimly. The notion of an army of creatures this tough and evidently at least as intelligent as dogs made her fervently glad she decided to pursue this link between Saren and Binary Helix.

"Maybe they crawled outside, and climbed along the tunnel exterior," Garrus speculated, more as a comfort than anything else. It was true the hallways they passed through had curved sides of glass displaying the craggy walls of the caves or steep ravines along which they were built, but they found no access hatches or even cracks.

The "roof" was in a similar location. There was a corrugated metal sheet suspended high over their heads attempting to keep snow from accumulating on the deck, but it still crept in around the edges where they met the rock walls sheathed in ice. Shepard could only wonder at the weight of snow and ice that must be laying on the sloping cantina-style roof. With their assailants dead it was quite quiet; they were so deep within the mountain that the wind was nonexistent. So quiet, in fact, she could almost perceive the hushed hiss of one flake meeting another as they drifted gently to the ground.

"Get those landlines resynced," she said, not looking back. "I'm going to explore a bit."

A little to her surprise, Liara padded along silently beside her. The snow drifts became deeper as they moved aft, first ankle deep, then knee- or even hip-deep in places. The rooftop had gone neglected for most of the storm, maybe longer- how long had it been since the last time the landlines needed any attention? It wasn't like Noveria had spring melts.

The reason became clear as they neared the back wall. Here, the gap between the roof and mountain widened, enough to allow a shuttle flown by a very steady hand to land. Which was exactly what they found sitting in a pile of snow-covered ice, where it melted and refroze beneath the heat of the retrorockets.

It was an NDC shuttle, marked and numbered, though of its crew there was no sign. Shepard brushed the snow from its pizoelectrically opaqued ports, but on this setting there was no hope of seeing inside. "It's cold, and this snow cover is thick. Nobody's used this in…"

But Shepard had no sense of weather and couldn't say how long it took for that much snow to accumulate, except that it looked like a very great while, days. Liara brushed her hand along the sliding side door and found the handle. It pulled open easily at her touch, showering the interior in snow. The craft was utilitarian; more comfortable than military shuttles, but none of the luxuries Shepard would expect for executive comfort. A duty vessel then, not one for enticing new clients or coddling existing ones. There was no sign of the pilot or any passengers.

Liara climbed aboard and sat in the pilot's couch, bringing the instrumentation online.

"Going somewhere?" Shepard asked lightly, but the asari refused to hear the joke.

"This shuttle isn't much different from the ones I used to rent for research expeditions." Liara began searching for the log. "I should be able to pull its manifest and heading."

"As soon as this is over, you can get back to your studies." Shepard meant it to sound reassuring, but it came out charitably naïve, or disingenuous at worst.

Liara continued scrolling through the records. "Maybe it seems that way to someone accustomed to having her life torn apart."

The comment stung, as it was meant to. Shepard stopped trying to play the role of the sister or the friend Liara clearly didn't want, and became all business. "What can you find?"

"This was my mother's shuttle." The words were empty. "ERCS flew her out six days ago, despite the weather, though if these readings are correct the blizzard worsened considerably between then and now. Officially, she was to investigate the Code Omega."

"This isn't a landing pad. Benezia instructed the pilot to set down here and bypass the garage."

"She must have already suspected what happened."

"So Saren was in charge of this breeding program, or whatever you want to call it." That was a depressing if expected confirmation.

Liara continued her findings. "The crates of geth were brought in a separate shuttle. There's no record of their landing coordinates."

"We have to assume there were more than the few we found in Central Station." If they were lucky, by now the loose experiments and the geth would have significantly reduced each other's numbers. If they weren't, Benezia had control of the creatures remaining in the labs and simply didn't care about those already loose.

The asari copied the log to her omni-tool and rose to leave. However, as she reached the door, something caught her eye. She stooped and pulled a bag from under one of the seats. Shepard peered at it. "What's that?"

It was leather, a fashionably cut and expensive satchel, with a drawstring closure. Liara held it on her knees and stared into its mouth. Her voice was rough. "Toiletries. She must have forgotten them."

She reached in, sifting the contents through her fingers. "Armali perfume. 700 credits an ounce, her favorite."

Shepard crouched in the snow just beyond the shuttle's sliding hatch, folding her arms on the shuttle floor. "Your mother isn't herself. You saw Shiala. You've seen my memories through the lens of the cipher. You have to hold onto that."

Her hand was wrapped around the slender bottle in a death grip. "How can she be indoctrinated to do these terrible things, but still enough herself to pack her favorite perfume?"

The commander regarded her evenly. "Are you ready to hear some truth, Liara?"

"What do you mean?"

Shepard's words were steady, though not unkind. "I've read your mother's history. Nine centuries is a lot to take in, so I'm sure you're more familiar with it, but it was obvious Benezia was a high-level political operative for the Asari Republics. Some of that seems to come with being a matriarch but a lot of it was her, her intelligence and charisma and drive."

Liara still didn't look up. "She never told me much about her work."

It was something she'd said before, often. Shepard shook her head. "I'm not her equal, but I've done a lot of things of which I'm not entirely proud in service to my people. Keeping the peace isn't always an honorable or pretty job. Lady Benezia's been implicated in some of-"

"Get to your point, if you have one."

Shepard touched her free hand, tentatively, gently. "My point is that she was packing the perfume for a long time, Liara. The difference is before it was for the good of the asari, freely given, and now it's compelled by the will of Saren."

Her head lowered further, drooping to the floor, until all Shepard could see were her head crenellations. But she didn't withdraw her hand, fingers only curling tighter on hers. "I never wanted to believe that."

"It's up to you to figure out which parts of her are most important. My mom is... detached, and a slave to her job, and bad at… listening, but she's always loved me, and most of the time I try to remember that." Shepard squeezed her hand earnestly. "But right now, I really need you to pull together. You wanted in on this mission. If you can't handle it-"

Her head snapped up and her eyes flashed. "I can handle it."

"You've been like a mannequin since we left Port Hanshan. You only seem to wake up when we're in imminent danger or I ask you a direct question."

"I'll be fine. I want to see this through to the end. I want to hear what she has to say." For the first time, there was a break in Liara's rigid neutrality, some real passion behind her words, something not filtered by careful self-control. "I want her to look at me and tell me why."

"Ok." Shepard wasn't sure if it would hold, but for the moment it worked. She rose, pulling Liara with her. "We've got work to do now."

She nodded, and followed without resistance- but Shepard saw her slip the fragile bottle into a utility pouch as they left the shuttle behind.

Garrus and Alenko were leaning against the terminal, waiting, with arms folded. The lieutenant straightened as she approached. "Landlines are connected and fully rebooted, ma'am. Mira is in touch with the sub-stations."

Snow had drifted into his dark hair and stuck between the strands. She had to resist a sudden urge to dust it off. Instead, she hooked her thumbs into her utility belt. "Good. Head for the rendezvous point. Hopefully Bravo Team's got the reactor back and we can finish this."

They weren't left waiting long. When they reached the power junction, each unit was already lit up and humming. The lights were coming back online in series, room by room. Soon after Wrex, Williams, and Tali joined them, smiling.

"The He-3 lines were cut off," Tali explained. "It was simple to fix."

"Resistance?" Shepard asked.

"Not anymore," Williams said with smug satisfaction.

Wrex clarified with a grunt. "Geth. Maybe a half dozen. You?"

"More of those acid-breathed bastards. If we want to avoid the orbital strike, we'll need to find a way to clear them all out."

"Assuming none of them left the facility. Cold doesn't seem to bother them." Wrex grinned, as though he rather liked the notion. "They could survive, live wild in the hills."

There was a pleasant thought. The commander rolled her eyes. "Let's not suggest that to NDC. We need to find that tramway."

Holographic signs posted in the hallways illuminated the way to the Decontamination and Transit Hub. As they approached the station, however, Mira's artificial voice erupted from the intercom. "User alert. Loose contaminants in the decontamination chamber. Access to passenger tramways inadvisable."

Alenko glanced towards the speaker, brow furrowed. "Isn't that a little oxymoronic? I mean, the point of a decontamination chamber is to get rid of contaminants."

The final hatch opened. Shepard regarded the scene. "Yes, I think that's exactly what it's designed to do."

Several of the creatures were trapped in another glass airlock, their pincers and pointed legs scrabbling at its smooth sides. Their screams of frustrated rage were continuous if muted by the walls. There was a thin strip of ceramic nozzles connected to external hosing penetrating the glass tube.

Tali blinked twice. "Are those plasma jets?"

The airlock's security terminal stood waiting. Shepard examined the menu. "It would appear so."

Williams was unsettled. "What, they just vaporize any 'contaminants' they don't like?"

"Given what they were working with?" Shepard shrugged. "Makes a kind of sense."

She tried scanning the stolen ident card. Unsurprisingly, garage staff did not have clearance to activate the decontamination protocols. "Tali, I need an override here."

While Tali worked, Shepard watched the creatures. Had they walked all the way down the tram line after Benezia cut the power? Or had she cut it to limit the creatures' mobility, knowing they could operate a tram? Was the power outage to slow her down or slow them down- or both?

"He has a geth army," she said aloud. "What the hell does he want with an organic one?"

Garrus shrugged. "Who wouldn't want an army that comes with its own built-in armor and weapons?"

Alenko had a different idea. "What if the geth thing is a partnership? The geth are in this because they want to see their 'gods' return, right? So maybe Saren just wants to wipe out humans, or seize the galaxy, and needs units under his complete control."

"He has indoctrination for that," Shepard pointed out. "But who knows if it works on software as well as on brains?"

Tali interrupted their idle musing. "Permission to fire?"

Shepard turned back towards the airlock. "Do it."

White-hot flames spurted from each nozzle, small, but powerful. Shepard expected the creatures to char, but the heat was far too much for that. They melted. The segmented carapaces softened, buckled, deformed. Legs collapsed one by one. She watched with a kind of morbid fascination, simultaneously intrigued and repulsed.

The jets kept running until no life signs registered in the tube. There was little but sludge remaining. They cracked the outer hatch and the smell almost knocked them over. Nobody wanted to take the first step inside.

In the quiet that followed, Shepard asked at last, "We're sure the protocol is deactivated?"

"Yes," Tali said firmly. "I triple-checked it."

"Check it again."

The remains were sufficiently compelling that Tali didn't even argue. She tapped at the terminal. "We're clear."

Shepard stepped into the airlock before she could think about it too hard. The hatch slid shut, the standard decontam protocol- same as on the _Normandy_- swept over her, and the far hatch split open. She let out a breath she didn't realize she was holding.

By the time the rest of the squad piled in and cleared decontam, she figured out a very basic strategy. "We make for the tram. Whatever we need to clear to get there, we clear, but the second we're aboard we roll. We can worry about the hostiles left at Central Station once our primary objective is met."

"And what is that, ma'am?" Williams asked.

Shepard expelled an exasperated sigh. "To stop Benezia."

"How-"

"Won't know until we figure out what the hell she and Saren wanted here." Shepard held out both arms in a got-me gesture. "Best I can do. We're figuring this one out as we go."

The gerbil-tube tunnel took a sharp left and turned into a staircase, which turned into a large hollowed-out habitat that housed the tram station. It was cavernous, with ceilings at least four times Shepard's own height, and long tunnels disappearing into the depths of the mountain. Holographic markers labeled each passage. Rift Station was nearest, and the only one with a tram parked at the platform.

They were halfway to the tram before the hissing started.

It came from all directions, growing in volume and number, and joined by skittering and the occasional cry. Shepard remembered Wrex's comment that the creatures were hunting, and never felt a stronger instinct to vacate a situation as soon as humanly possible. Most armchair philosophers got fight-or-flight wrong. It didn't define two categories of people. Possessing a fight-or-flight instinct meant the ability to do one or the other when appropriate, to avoid the paralysis of indecision, and in this particular circumstance the smartest thing to do was get the hell out.

She pointed her gun towards the shadows and gestured her team forward. "Keep moving. Quickly."

They ran on ahead of her. She was happy to bring up the rear, laying down enough cover fire to make the gathering shadows think twice about leaping. The group moved steadily towards the tram. The bugs crept steadily closer, beginning to flank them.

Shepard was the last one aboard. She slammed the sliding door shut and secured it as best she could, but it wasn't meant to lock. "Someone get this damn thing moving."

Alenko hit a button. On the tram intercom, Mira's voice announced smoothly, "This tram is departing for Rift Station in sixty seconds. For your safety, please ensure all clothing and other items are free of the tram doors."

Beyond the glass, the creatures were forming up to rush the tram. Shepard imagined enough of them, in force, could push the tram off its rails. Breaking the glass would be a parlor trick. "Override! We need to depart immediately!"

"Trying!" Tali said, her voice strained.

Silently, the others lined up beside Shepard, sighting on their targets outside the tram. Shepard held her rifle steady. "Hold your fire until they breach the glass. Let's not make this easier for them."

"This tram is departing for Rift Station in thirty seconds. For your safety-"

As one, the creatures flung themselves at the tram.

It rocked with the force of the impact, teetering sideways. Shepard was ready for it and kept her footing. Liara was knocked to her knees and Tali slammed into the side wall, interrupting her work. Shepard could hear her cursing to herself.

Their enemy backed away, just enough to make another run, and charged once more. It was less organized this time, with individuals striking at different moments before backing off to run at it again. Cracks began to appear in the windows. Shepard pressed against the trigger, ready to fire on the next assault. "Here they come."

"This tram is departing for Rift Station in ten seconds," Mira announced, still unruffled by events.

The final wave struck the tram just as it lurched and began accelerating down the tunnel. Several creatures jumped onto empty air. One was scraped off on the tunnel wall as it narrowed leaving the station. And one erupted through the window, tearing at the seats as it struggled to arrest its momentum inside the cabin.

Shepard barely turned before it tensed for another leap, to bring its whip-like pincers into range. _Damn, this thing is fast. _Far too fast to aim with any reliability, so she simply pointed at the red blur and held down the trigger. In such confines, with the single hostile unit so outnumbered, the outcome was inevitable no matter how graceless the plan. Confused by the barrage and in considerable pain, it attempted to burrow into the cushions as though they were soft earth rather than vinyl with thin polyester stuffing. It died half-curled over a bench. Several of the lights dangled from the ceiling on thin wires, smashed or flickering, and the interior of the tram resembled a ground zero disaster zone, but the car itself remained intact and hurtled down its rails as smoothly as ever.

Calmly, almost delicately, Shepard sat down in the one remaining untouched seat and crossed her legs to wait out the ride.

Rift Station's tram depot was not as large or ostentatious as Central Station's, but it was even more abandoned. Though an attack was half-expected, there was no sign of the creatures anywhere. They followed the directional labels adorning the walls a short distance to an elevator marked "Hot Labs", only to find it locked down. The one beside it, however, was not. The posted signage indicated it led upstairs to housing and security.

Shepard pressed the call button. If the loss of power and the runaway experiments left any survivors, this was the mostly likely area to find them, and she wanted answers. At the very least, the scientists should be able to explain their creations.

When they arrived on the upper floor, they found themselves facing three unwavering rifle barrels across a barricade of overturned lab benches and supply crates.

"Stand down," Shepard called, keeping her hands in plain view. "We're here to help."

After a moment's hesitation, a dark man in white and blue armor emblazoned with Binary Helix's corporate logo lowered his weapon. "Sorry. We couldn't be sure what was on the tram when we saw it come in."

He nodded towards a bank of windows overlooking the Rift Station Transport Hub. Shepard looked back at him. "Can those things operate a tram?"

"Fuck if I know." He shook his head. She noticed then that all of the guards were harried and beyond exhausted, with that wild look to their eyes that indicated heavy stim use. Their leader continued, "You're clearly not a bug, but the station's sealed off and I've never seen you or your people before in my life. Who the hell are you?"

"I'm a spectre, sent by the Council to find Matriarch Benezia." It was close enough to the truth. She held out her hand. "Shepard. And you are…?"

"Captain Ventralis. I head up the security team for this outpost." He shook her hand with a nice firm grip. "Between the hot labs and the secure research area, Rift Station needs a little more than the rest of the facility."

"What happened here, Captain?"

He ran his hand over his bald pate wearily. "The aliens overran the hot labs last week. Only Han Olar made it out, and… well, he ain't exactly all there anymore, you know? Next thing I know, they're clawing into my security office. Took us by surprise. We lost a third of our detachment in the first few minutes before we rallied and drove them back. Now, we get attacks hourly, testing our defenses."

"That's damn hard," Shepard said, meaning every word. She folded her arms and tilted her head. "What are they? The bugs, I mean."

"Don't know. Don't really care. I don't need a name to shoot them." He shrugged. "It was a highly confidential project. Maybe under the circumstances you can talk one of the scientists into elaborating."

Alenko cut in. "So there are other survivors?"

Ventralis nodded. "About a dozen or so, yeah. The board sent some asari to clean up the mess- maybe your matriarch. She disappeared into the secure labs and locked things down tight. I'm sorry if you wasted a trip."

Shepard glanced between the barricade and the elevator. "Your alien bugs didn't stay in the hot labs. They've overrun the place, all the way to the garage in Central Station."

"Damn it. That's worse than I thought."

Tali folded her arms. "What exactly is a 'hot lab'?"

"The kind that exists to do stupid crap that gets people killed." Ventralis spat. "It's built into a glacier, an old, thick, stable one. If something goes wrong, they heat up the whole lab block and sink it into the ice. Hence the name."

"Right." Shepard nodded to herself. "Ok. Can I speak with your scientists?"

"Sure thing. Just give me a sec." He relayed instructions to his team, and then gestured towards her. "This way."

As they walked, the commander made small talk, hoping to pry out a little more information. "How are your people holding up?"

"It ain't been easy." He sighed. "We're staying on top of things with long shifts and mandatory stims. I don't like it, but all the options here are bad. The ERCS folks the asari brought with are helping out a bit."

"She didn't take them with her?"

"No, only her own people, more asari. Carrying a boatload of gear, too, in these huge crates. Made us dig up the pallet lifts. Shit was heavy as hell."

So commandos and geth surrounded Benezia down in the labs. Shepard tucked that away for future consideration. Ventralis opened a hatch and waved her through. "These are the central barracks and med bay. We fell back here after the attack. Anyone left alive is in these rooms. Good luck."

"Thanks." She watched him go with narrowed eyes, then rubbed her forehead.

"Ma'am?" Williams asked.

"They're working for her," Shepard stated flatly. "The captain's the first person on Noveria to have no reaction to my spectre rank, and they've been cut off from all communication. Benezia warned him we were coming."

Garrus was unconvinced. "That's a big leap."

"It feels right." Shepard rubbed at her eyes with thumb and forefinger, trying to wipe away the veil of tiredness slowly creeping in. The drive up the mountain was exhausting in its own right, and the clock was moving towards midnight.

"It sounds like mother," Liara volunteered, unexpectedly. "She would not want people unnecessarily hurt. She wouldn't instruct the guards to fight a spectre unless there was no other way. Instead, they waylay us."

Alenko shook his head. "Bottling us up with the scientists."

"What are we waiting for, then?" Wrex's brow lifted higher over his eyes, speculative. "Let's find a door and break it down."

Shepard wasn't ready for such drastic action. "I want to know what they were breeding here. I want to know if Saren was their only client. And I want to know what defenses Benezia might have at her disposal besides those she brought in herself."

Williams watched the scientists, huddled in groups towards the far side of the room casting the occasional furtive glance towards the _Normandy _squad, the stone-faced ERCS and Binary Helix guards with their rifles relaxed in their hands, the powered down terminals lining the walls, and bit her lip. "It doesn't look like anyone's going to tell us much, ma'am."

"They'll talk, Chief," Shepard reassured her, and abandoned the doorway to move into the room.

The space was the very definition of utilitarian with its unpolished, cross-hatched metal floor, powder-coated portable countertops, and military-issue cots. Corrugated steel staircases led right to more bunk space and left to the med bay. Equipment storage lockers formed lonesome islands in the middle of the room with their electronic locks blinking perfunctorily at nothing. With the power restored, the fluorescent bulbs dangling from wire mounts were at full force, washing the air in sterile colorless light.

There wasn't so much as a cheesy corporate promotional poster in sight, Shepard noted. This lab was entirely preoccupied with bare functionality. Or, put another way, Binary Helix never expected outsiders to see it. Compared to the ostentatious splendor of Central Station with its high ceilings and thick glass windows, Rift Station was a desert. The work must be highly proprietary.

The survivors comprised a mix of species, mostly human, but interspersed with asari, salarian, and even an elcor, brooding quietly in a corner. Their expressions were that curious mix of dog-tired and terrified one got after a week of living under siege. Conversation was hushed. When Shepard questioned them, she didn't learn much aside from none of them survivors were allowed in the most secured labs, where the casualties had been the worst, and had no idea the creatures existed until the containment breach.

Shepard recalled Ventralis' mention of the volus, Han Olar, who managed a harrowing escape from the hot labs, and made her way down to med bay, hoping to speak with him. Instead, she found a worried doctor moving from bed to bed with a defeated air as he attended to prone patients. "Excuse me. Can I have a few minutes of your time?"

He straightened and turned towards her, removing the cigarette from his mouth. "And you are?"

"Commander Shepard, Council Spectre," she said, keeping it brief. "Smoking around your patients?"

"It's important for my nerves. I'm a microbiologist, not a medic. Zev Cohen at your service." He offered her a rather old-fashioned bow suffused with more weary courtesy than sarcasm and took another drag. "I don't suppose you have a smoke on you? This is my last one."

"Sorry, no." Shepard smoked on occasion, but cigarettes were more recreation than habit, something to relieve the tension when she was back on Arcturus waiting for the next mission. She jerked her chin towards the patients. "What's wrong with them? They don't look like they got mauled by those things."

"No, most of those who came within reach of the creatures didn't survive long enough to require medical care. But that was hardly the only experiment in progress, when the power went down."

An asari sitting cross-legged on one of the beds rolled her eyes languorously. Shepard furrowed her brow, and the woman heaved a sigh. "What?"

"You don't look sick."

"I'm not sick," she explained as if to a toddler. "I'm _meditating_."

Shepard was dubious. "It looked more like you were mocking the doctor."

She made a sound of disgust and shifted her gaze towards the ceiling as if she couldn't possibly be more annoyed. "I suppose it might look that way, to a human."

The commander's patience wore thin. "Who are you?"

If she'd been human, she would have flipped her hair, but as it was, the asari simply leveled her look. "Alestia Iallis. Don't strain your monkey vocal chords trying to say it. Molecular geneticist. I specialize in biotic-enhanced allele specific hybridization."

Shepard recognized Iallis was trying to make her feel stupid with garbled jargon, and didn't rise to the bait. Instead, she returned her attention to the doctor. "These people were exposed to some sort of… what, bio-weapon?"

"We test our fail-safes monthly, but quarantine procedures were disrupted in one of the labs. We had to lock it down manually. By then, a good half-dozen people were exposed." He tutted. "If I had my equipment, it would be a simple manner to treat, but those hare-brained idiots from security didn't see fit to retrieve it before sealing the facility."

It didn't escape Shepard's notice that the doctor refused to confirm the nature of the toxin. She decided it didn't matter, at least not right now. "I'm looking for Han Olar. I hoped to find him here."

"My apologies, Commander. He wanted to return to his old quarters downstairs. I thought it might be best for his mental health to allow it. Han is… quite shaken by events."

"Lost his mind, is what you mean," Iallis muttered, contemptuous.

Cohen gave the asari a nervous glance and tugged at his lab tunic. "Yes, well. Perhaps I can beg a favor of you, Commander?"

"Maybe we can help each other. I'm looking for an asari matriarch, Benezia."

His eyes slid briefly back to Iallis, who glared, and he cleared his throat. "She's within the secure labs. I don't know any more than that."

Shepard turned her most intimidating stare on the asari biologist. "What about you? Know anything?"

"Why don't you ask your friend?" She pointed to Liara.

Liara drew herself up, glaring as well. "Because I don't know anything about the matriarch."

"Then why should I?" Iallis drawled, with a deprecating smile.

Shepard's eyes lingered on her a few moments longer than was strictly necessary before addressing Cohen. "You want me to retrieve your supplies."

He nodded. "Captain Ventralis has refused my pleas for entry, but a spectre's voice might carry more weight."

Shepard snorted. "I wouldn't count on it. Is he right to keep the lab sealed?"

"No," Cohen answered emphatically. "The… period of viability is extraordinarily brief. After that, it breaks down into simple protein chains. We're well outside that window now. But the man dismisses anything he deems 'technobabble' out-of-hand."

"You can't blame him for being cautious." Shepard glanced back at the patients. "If I find myself near your quarantined lab, I'll see what I can do. No promises."

"Thank you. That's all I can ask." The doctor watched them depart, and then slapped his forehead. "Oh, damn, I forgot to tell her where it is. I'll just be a moment."

He hurried out into the hall, feeling the asari's eyes boring holes into his back until he rounded the corner. "Commander!"

Shepard paused, looking over her shoulder. "Doctor?"

He stepped closer and lowered his voice. "The guards have been on edge, waiting for you. They're not to let you through, do you understand me? They're in your matriarch's pocket."

She regarded him. "What do you suggest?"

"I did some of my work in the secure labs. Help me retrieve my equipment, help me spare these people, and I'll give you my access."

Her squad exchanged glances. Shepard drew her rifle and checked it over. "Where to?"

"I'll show you. It's just down the elevator. Follow me." Cohen took off at a rapid walk, almost a jog, forcing Shepard to run a bit to catch up.

"You seem nervous," she remarked.

"Aliens invaded my lab and killed my colleagues. Damn, but we spent the first few hours after lockdown showering off the blood and brains. How am I supposed to behave?"

They crowded into the elevator and Cohen hit the button, his hand shaking a bit. "You don't know what they're like," he said quietly.

Her brow furrowed. "What who's like?"

But the doctor simply stared at the door and waited for it to be over.

The elevator spilled them into a low-ceilinged room thick with pipes and the hum of serious computer equipment. He strode briskly to a vault-like hatch looked after by a turian in a Binary Helix security team hard suit. The guard gave him a bored stare. "We've been through this, Zev. I'm not opening up against orders. Get lost."

Cohen folded his arms and looked down his nose imperiously. "Not this time. I've a spectre with me."

He gestured to Shepard. The turian burst out laughing. "There aren't any human spectres."

The commander shot Garrus a smug glance, validating her earlier extrapolation of Ventralis' lack of surprise, and put a hand to her ear to activate the comm link. Finding the correct frequency was trivial; they weren't using any scrambling. "Commander Shepard to Captain Ventralis, come in."

There was a pause. Shepard's eyes never left the turian's face as the communication played through both their comms. "Spectre. What do you need?"

"Access to your quarantine lab. Order your man to stand down."

"God, I wish we could help those guys, I really do. But we can't risk an outbreak now."

"Captain, this isn't the moment for timidity. You've lost enough friends and colleagues. I've got Dr. Cohen here and he assures me there is no risk."

The next several seconds stretched. The link crackled. "You want to gamble with your life, that's your business. We're locking you in. When you're ready to leave, sensors are going to sample every inch of you. Even a _hint _of contamination, and you're going to stay in there."

"That's fair." She folded her arms and stared at the turian. "Open the door."

Ventralis said, "Stand down, Sergeant."

He grumbled, but began working the electronic lock affixed beside the hatch. Shepard smiled. "Thank you, Captain. Shepard out."

The hatch lock turned green. The turian eyed her sullenly. "You got a death wish, lady, that's your problem. I'd recommend manning the barricade over this."

There was another piece of information she wanted, and her instinct told her that if she pushed now, she could have it. "Please. All you've faced since the initial assault are probing attacks."

"Fuck you." He jabbed a finger in her chest. "We lost good people-"

"Don't I know it." She carefully avoided crossing the line into mocking their loss- that was tasteless and the goal wasn't to provoke him into an outright attack- but she kept her tone light enough to be offensive. "It's not surprising a bunch of overcooked shrimp caused this kind of damage. Some professional advice? Three coordinated guys could take this place."

She had the attention of the entire room. Cohen was open-mouthed with shock, her team was confused, and the turian guard was simply enraged. His anger was cold and sharp. "You don't know shit. Narrow tunnels and limited access points make the facility more defensible than it looks. That's without counting the automated defenses, like our mobile turrets."

Shepard curled the fingers of her gloved hand idly as if examining her fingernails. "Turrets can be overridden."

"We've got alarms, and cameras." He ticked them off one by one. "Everything routes through a central office and good luck breaching that. It's the only way you can take the defenses offli-" His brain finally caught up to his mouth, which snapped shut with a clack of his mandibles, chagrined.

"Thank you, Sergeant, for that illuminating speech." She offered him a crisp smile. "Man, I can't imagine why the Hierarchy navy chucked you out."

"They didn't kick me out. I was discharged after I served my term," he answered, stiffly.

"Of course." She slid past him into the lab airlock, and turned around. "Dr. Cohen, if you'd join me. We shouldn't be long."

The hatch shut behind them, the air automatically purged to clean-room levels, and they were admitted to the quarantine lab proper. Equipment abandoned-in-place decorated the counters and the floor, where it was knocked over in the scientists' haste to evacuate. The door to the walk-in refrigerator stood open. Shepard stuck her head in. Wire racks stacked high with test tubes, petri dishes, and all manner of chemical compounds stood waiting, condensation slick across their surfaces.

Cohen went to a desk and began sorting through the contents, throwing things into a bag he found tucked in the kneehole. "You did that on purpose."

He sounded as if he didn't know whether to be upset or concerned. She paced the room, examining the remnants of the laboratory. "Anger's the best interrogation technique I know. I needed information about how this place is defended and it wasn't like they were going to just tell me."

"They might have."

She gave him a cynical and somewhat amused look. "You don't believe that."

He answered with chilly silence, stone-faced as he continued stuffing the bag with gear. Shepard continued her inspection.

After a minute or two, there was a crash from outside the lab. Shepard's hand flew to her sidearm. "What was that?"

He glanced toward the door. "Another attack?"

Anything they could hear through the quarantine airlock had to be awful loud. The crash was followed by the sound of the airlock cycling, a hiss of air and electronics. Shepard took aim. "Get into cover."

"Cover-"

"The refrigerator. Go."

The doctor half-ran across the lab, pulling the door shut behind him. Shepard took another careful step forward. The hatch slid open.

Her eyes widened. "You know, I ought to be less surprised."

"It's amazing, isn't it?" Alestia Iallis stepped sideways, her own gun drawn, unwavering, while her left hand glowed with the telltale sign of a primed biotic attack. "How in this era of interspecies cooperation as soon as the term 'racist bitch' comes to mind, it blinds us to everything else."

"But I suppose I'd know that, if I wasn't such a primate?" Shepard grinned without humor.

"So it wasn't entirely an act." She returned the smile. "Can you disagree? Look how easily I cornered you. My… staff should be making quick work of your squad."

"Don't be so sure." They were circling each other now, one wary step after the next, trying to subtly gain some sort of cover, or distraction, before the other could. "My people are the best, and nobody had to brainwash them into service."

Iallis' grin faded. "Your mission ends now, Shepard. I was ordered to eliminate you should the opportunity arise, and here we are."

"And the guard? Were you ordered to eliminate him too?" Out of the corner of her eye, Shepard spied a potentially useful pipe, supplying the lab with hot water. Just another step… "You may be a sleeper agent for Benezia, but I don't think that one's in her playbook."

"He was in my way. And I don't think you know her very well."

Shepard lunged for the pipe valve at the same time Iallis fired.

The shot struck one of the ceramic plates affixed to her chest and Shepard felt it crack under the impact. _What the hell is WITH tiny people and high-caliber guns? _But her gloved hand closed on the valve and yanked it open, flooding the room with boiling steam and the gush of water.

More bullets followed in rapid succession, but without more than a shadow to aim at, all missed. Shepard kept moving. A ball of blue tinged energy cut through the fog and smacked unerringly into her back, causing her to stumble. Her skin felt like it was on fire, but as all her muscles kept moving, she ignored it. Pain was simply a form of organic alarm. With sufficient training it could be shut out enough to remain functional.

She returned fire, not having any better line of sight but tracking the asari by her footsteps. Wrex was wrong. Killing people wasn't fun. It was messy and somewhat awful, and not infrequently involved a certain amount of paperwork. Being really, really good at shooting guns, though- that was fun. She heard the tell-tale warble of a shield going down and then a cry of pain.

Another shot, not as successful. A shatter of glass as it hit some delicate instrument or other. Her face twitched, annoyed. Across the room, plastic snapped under Iallis' boot. The asari was pissed off. "You can't hide for fucking ever."

Apparently, Iallis was under the impression the first two shots were luck. Shepard fired into the steam again to prove her wrong. There was a surprised yelp. Not a serious hit, then, but the woman stopped talking.

Iallis had a point. The temperature of the water was falling rapidly now that the line was exposed to the air. Her artificial fog wouldn't hold up much longer, and she had a bruise the size of her spread hand welling up on her chest from the asari's opening round. Her armor wouldn't last against that kind of firepower.

Shepard narrowly dodged another blind biotic attack by ducking behind a desk at the last moment, too late for the orb to alter its trajectory. There was a microscope sitting atop it. She seized it in one hand, held her rifle outstretched in the other, and charged through the remaining steam.

The second she glimpsed the asari, she flung the scope as hard as she could. It didn't miss. While Iallis was distracted, she shot out her shield, and kept her finger on the trigger as she smoothly added a second hand for steadier aim. Her opponent slumped to the floor where blood began to pool beneath her body.

Shepard wasn't going to leave anything to chance. As she approached, Iallis managed to roll onto her back through dint of great effort, wheezing unsteadily. She stared up at Shepard and began to laugh, the ragged, pulpy laughter of shredded lungs, as she took in the biotic-singed and dented armor. "Where's your shield, you bloody idiot?"

"Well," Shepard said, kicking her gun out of reach and squatting beside her, "I wanted to make certain you got a fair fight."

Iallis managed one last contemptuous eye roll before her head lolled and the rigidity left her body, relaxing into the final rest. With clinical distance Shepard confirmed death with an omni-tool scan. The sounds from outside the lab had quieted. She hoped that was good news.

The refrigerator door cracked open, timidly, and Cohen stepped out. He caught sight of the corpse and blanched.

Shepard looked up mildly. "Alright there, doc?"

"I told you, I'm not a medic." His face was a faint shade of green. "All these theatrics are a bit beyond me."

"Got what you need?"

He nodded. "Please, let's just… let's just go."

The touted sensors cleared them easily, and the outer hatch of the lab opened on a scene of chaos. Several of the ceiling pipes were leaking fluid, bullets pockmarked the walls and floor, and inactive geth chassis lay in pieces all around them. The obstinate turian guard was dead at her feet. Shepard stepped over him.

"Report," she barked.

"Hostiles neutralized. No friendly casualties," Alenko relayed dutifully. "There are a few scientists hiding out in the bunks. They scattered when the geth showed up with that asari."

"Where did they come from?"

Garrus winced and rolled his shoulder, massaging it. "Not sure. They came up from behind. Got me good a couple of times before I realized what was happening."

A shaky voice overlaid by heavy-duty breathing apparatus issued from behind a server rack. "I may be able to address that question."

He was small, less than 120 centimeters, dressed toes to nose in an envirosuit. Unlike quarians, who wore the suits to protect their delicate immune systems, volus like this man had ammonia-based biochemistry. The pressures and atmospheres comfortable to all the other sentient races were poison to them. Nothing of its anatomy was visible beneath the heavy panels, tubes, and webbing of the suit, but to Shepard volus always rather unkindly resembled overgrown raccoons, sans tails. It was something about the thick metal-ringed lenses that allowed them to see out of their pressurized breather helms and snout-like mouth apertures which filtered their voices. They were stocky running to fat, with stubby arms and legs, and a reputation for cut-throat trade and finance that hardly endeared them to the galaxy. All the best bankers were volus.

This one, however, appeared to be a scientist. He twiddled his fingers. "You came to find out about them, didn't you?"

Shepard furrowed her brow. "What, the geth? No."

"The rachni," he corrected. His respirator rasped into the sudden silence. "The bugs."

"That's preposterous," Liara said at last, but it was weak.

Wrex was outraged. "The rachni are all dead. My ancestors saw to that."

Shepard didn't think her eyebrows could climb further into her hair. "Who are you, and what the hell do you mean, rachni?"

"My name is Han Olar. I was assigned to the rachni project." He sucked in another noisy breath and let it out. "There was an egg, on a derelict ship. Cryogenic storage, since before the end of the wars." Hiss, clunk, rasp. "Binary Helix thought they could clone it, but inside was a queen- able to produce her own workers, using the stored DNA of her fathers."

Cohen interrupted, alarmed. "Han, you can't talk like that. The non-disclosure-"

"I shit on their non-disclosure." He said it so flatly and without passion that it raised the hairs on Shepard's neck. There was nothing but emptiness behind the words.

She kept her focus on the facts. "I need to know everything you can tell me."

"I told you all I can. We brought the rachni back from the dead. In retrospect, a bad decision."

Alenko rubbed his chin, fascinated. "Drifting out there, all those years… that's wild. How'd anyone find something like that? Can't imagine it had much of a heat signature."

Olar shrugged. "That was before the rachni workers birthed by the queen reached my lab. But there's something wrong with them. They act crazy. Incoherent. No sign of a self-preservation instinct, just… unparalleled rage."

Tali's voice held a trace of wonder. "Captain Ventralis told us you were in the hot labs when the rachni got loose. How did you survive that? Just a handful of them almost overwhelmed us."

"I…" The volus trailed off. He stared into space. "I killed her. We were getting on the tram, about to go to lunch, when we heard the alarms… They came pouring out. I shut the door. She… she banged on the window. I shut the door. I killed her. They clawed at her. Split her head like a melon."

_Screams and thrashing in the dark. She tore at tent flaps as she ran by. Get out! Move your asses! Make for the goddamn trees- they're too big to follow! While all about them entire rows of tents were flying up into the air as nameless, shadowed shapes caused the ground to ripple and sink like a living thing and not a dead floor of planetary rock._

_God, she could remember their stinking breath, warm rotten air like a thousand carcasses making her sweat and gag and want to breathe shallow breathes through her mouth right when she needed oxygen most, in a flat-out run on a tropical greenhouse of a planet. Her boots slapped against the mud. _

"You couldn't know," Williams was saying, a stab at empathy. "You did exactly right. And you're helping us put those bastards down for good."

"You think I want absolution?" Olar asked, a touch sharp. "There is none."

Shepard looked down at the hunched figure. "You survived and she didn't. Was it worth it?"

He glanced up at her. There was no reading his expression through the suit, but something about the way he stood seemed searching and ashamed. "I don't know."

"Good answer," Shepard said, uninflected as she was honest. "You'll be ok."

Strangely, that seemed to mollify him. He nodded. "The geth came from the maintenance tunnel. It leads into the secure labs."

Cohen fumbled at his belt and produced an access pass. "Here. Take it. This equipment won't do my patients much good if the geth come up and slaughter us all."

She clipped the laminate badge beside the one from the garage staffer. "Garrus, Tali- find that central security station. I want all the drones and anything else you can find shut down. Geth and a commando unit are enough to deal with."

They glanced at each other and nodded. Garrus said, "We're on it. Good luck, Shepard."

She returned the nod and watched them take off towards the elevator. "Olar, Cohen- anything else about Benezia? How many people did she bring with her?"

Cohen grimaced. It was clear that despite the urgency, he was torn between protecting his job and wanting to survive long enough for job security to matter. "Not counting Iallis, maybe five. Six?"

Williams swallowed. "Six asari commandos."

Shepard looked back at the lab where Iallis' body lay. "They're not so bad. We can do this. Let's go."


	38. Chapter 38

The maintenance tunnel proved to be little more than a crudely hacked passage through the ice, sized for large machinery, but without installed walls, ceiling or floor, few support beams, and no climate control. It was a manmade cave. They hurried through as fast as they dared, boots sliding on the ice. Shepard swiped Cohen's badge through a door at the far end marked "Secure Lab". There was a pause as the security protocols processed the input, a small eternity to wonder whether it would work, before the hatch slid into the wall on a screech of chilled rails.

The team raced along a suspended metal pathway, enclosed in gerbil tube prefabs like the rest of this place, until it widened into a large, vaulted room humming with sensitive equipment. In the center a platform rose a full story, bearing a cylindrical glass tank the size of a small truck. Next to it stood a tall asari woman swathed in an elegant black dress of an outdated style and an odd ascetic jacket with a close-fit hood that left no skin visible- no pinstriped suit in sight. A good actress, then. Her back was to Shepard's squad, arms wrapped about her waist as she pondered the tank's contents.

Shepard could tell by the way Liara went rigid as soon as the asari came into view that this must be Benezia. Of her commandos, there was no sign. This was a bad situation. They'd be sitting ducks on the platform, but she needed to talk to Benezia, not simply shoot her. She sucked in a breath and mounted the stairs, her team following behind.

The matriarch did not turn at their approach. Indeed, she seemed quite unconcerned, gaze fixed on the tank. Her voice was cadenced, almost professorial. "You do not know the privilege of being a mother. There is power in creation, the oldest kind of power there is, the making and shaping of life. Primal." Benezia gestured towards the tank. "Her children were to be ours, raised to hunt and slay Saren's enemies, a screaming insatiable horde of overwhelming destruction."

She looked at the ground and shook her head, chuckling softly. "How foolish we were. How arrogant. She is so much more than that."

Shepard's eyes strayed to the tank. The glass walls were so thick they distorted the light passing through, but inside, the outline of a rachni was clear, though one quite unlike any seen previously. It was three times larger, jet black in place of lobster red, with a heavy abdomen that dragged against the bottom of the tube. It held itself lengthwise rather than rear up on its legs, the graceful segments of its thorax rising in pyramidal slopes. Spots of white and lines of deep purple decorated the carapace. Two luminous white eyes fixed above the creature's six mandibles, perfectly round and lacking an iris, gazed back with a keen and penetrating stare.

Beside her, Liara could no longer hold her tongue. "And what do _you _know about the privileges of motherhood, except the privilege to dictate however you please?"

Benezia turned then, as if startled beyond all expectation. The jacket clasped at her throat, displaying an impressive spread of cleavage, and left her gaunt face bare. She didn't look like Liara's mother; she barely looked alive, so stark were her cheekbones and sunken were her eyes. But they were the same blue, enormous and full of sentiment, and they had the same out-of-place black markings above across the brow. Benezia's lips were stained a severe black. Deep lines etched around her nose, mouth, and along the fine bones of her hands betrayed her great age, though there was nothing of frailty about her. "Liara…"

For a moment, just a moment, her stony expression flickered with something that might have been repulsion, or regret, but it was gone as soon as it came, before Shepard could be certain it was there at all. The matriarch's hands clasped behind her back. "I will not be moved by sympathy, no matter who you drag into this confrontation."

_Believe me, I'd rather she wasn't. _But aloud, she merely said, "Liara's here of her own volition. From what I hear, compelling people against their will is more your style."

She ignored the barb. "Indeed? And tell me, sweet Liara, what secrets have you whispered into the commander's ears about me?"

"What could I say?" There was an edge of hysteria, of defeat, to Liara's voice. "Should I tell her about the trips, the ones where you'd leave for weeks without warning? How you'll stop at nothing if you think it gains asari an advantage? Should I perhaps itemize your strengths and weaknesses, inventory your biotics, explain how to kill you? Tell me, mother, you who always knows best- what should I say?"

"You were always weak. You couldn't even outthink a krogan and handful of machines on your own." Benezia's lips pressed together. She deliberately turned her gaze back to Shepard, a dismissal as cold as it was cruel, and smiled indulgently. "So, Commander, Spectre, this little human girl who stands before me wearing the titles and trappings of things so old she can barely understand them, the child who found a single bottled message whilst playing in the sandbox and now wants to stop a war- tell me, what is it that you want? I'm in a mood to be entertained."

Shepard refused to rise to the bait. "I don't think your puppet master sends his most important asset to fix an accident at the lab. What does Saren really want with this place? What was so important that he sends you to rescue it?"

"It would appear the reports are accurate. You have neither grace nor subtlety," the matriarch said smoothly. "I wonder if they spoke equally true of your combat prowess?"

Somewhere in the depths of the lab, a hatch opened. Shepard felt her stomach clench. _Shit, she was stalling us. _Adrenaline shot through her body and time seemed to slow as she assessed their surroundings. They were far too exposed up here.

Benezia was still talking. "Fortunately, I have arranged a small test. Have you faced an asari commando unit before? Few humans have." She shifted her weight, crossing her arms carelessly, as if nothing Shepard did could possibly impress her and it wouldn't matter even if she were mistaken, and offered a beguiling smile.

Shepard longed to wipe the smug expression off her face. "You might want to ask your sleeper agent for a detailed report of my skills." Then she smiled maniacally. "Oh wait! You can't."

Benezia snarled and flung out her left hand, glowing blue, but Shepard was already diving behind a steel cart. It turned out not to matter. The matriarch swept her arm over her head and slammed her palm into the floor.

Immediately, an enormous shock front of dark energy swept clear the platform, sending equipment, tables, datapads, and people flying. The cart tumbled end over end and pinned Shepard to a support column. It was heavy, a few hundred kilos of heavy-gauge metal sheeting and laden drawers, and she couldn't immediately move it.

A second burst of raw biotic energy tore a hole the size of Shepard's head in the floor inches from her face. She could hear her squad shouting as shots began to fill the air. Most of them were pushed off the platform. She struggled with the marooned furniture, watching Benezia's feet through a thin gap between the cart and the floor.

The matriarch advanced on her position. She could see the hem of her dress brushing the ground. "Your insolence is a poor mask for your fear."

There was another set of feet at the edge of Shepard's vision, coming up behind Benezia- black hard suit boots, generic navy grunt equipment, the exact suit they'd fitted for Liara when she joined the crew. Shepard, annoyed beyond all belief by this woman's theatrics and after that comment feeling rather like she'd slipped sideways into a _Star Wars _movie, growled from beneath the cart. "Maybe, but you forgot something."

Laughter. "And what is that?"

The boots crept closer. "Luke kicks Vader's ass."

Benezia paused in her step, utterly confused. "What?"

And then, without warning, she was knocked flat to the ground by the force of Liara's biotic attack.

Shepard didn't wait for her to recover. With one last grunt she shoved the cart up and forward, enough to slide out from under it, and snagged Liara by the arm. "Come on!"

They stumbled down the stairs, taking them three at a time. Benezia was yelling something unintelligible from the platform. Shepard herded them towards the sound of gunfire.

Liara struggled. "We need to go back. We have to stop my mother from finishing her plan!"

"No, what we need to do now is regroup. If her team divides us we're toast."

The asari stared back over her shoulder. "But-"

"First rule of combat situations." Shepard hauled her forward. "Never argue with your C.O."

They found Williams and Alenko crouched behind a set of lab benches divided by an aisle, trading off taking shots at the asari squad and allowing their weapons to cool. She drew her rifle and crouched next to the lieutenant, taking aim even as she spoke. "Status?"

"Three here. Two now." His pistol barked twice. "Biotics are no good, their barriers are too solid. I think Wrex landed on the other side of the platform. Another two commandos ran off that way- probably chasing each other's tails across the lab."

Shepard ducked as one of the asari let off a shotgun blast squarely in her direction. It shattered a glass-fronted cabinet above her head. Shards rained down on her hair. Most of it stuck. She popped back up over the top of the bench and let off three rounds into the asari's chest, all deflected. The woman ran behind a row of storage lockers. "We left Benezia up by the tank. She won't stay out of the fight long."

Williams leaned out of cover, fired, and slid back just before a ball of dark energy could rip her arm from its socket. "The last thing we need is a fucking matriarch in this mess."

Barriers were nasty business. They had to be worn down, until the amount of energy battering them exceeded what the biotic was capable of staving off. And even then, it was only a matter of time until the creator regained her stamina and put it back up. There was only a narrow window to put in any shots that counted and with all the cover in the lab, Shepard wasn't sure they had that kind of time.

"Geth?" she asked.

Alenko took another shot. "No sign of them."

There was a tremendous crash from the other side of the platform, followed by kind of yell only a krogan could produce. Shepard's head jerked towards the noise- which was also when she realized Liara was nowhere to be seen. "Can you hold here?"

His face was strained but honest. "For now. Try to hurry."

She gave him a curt nod and scuttled away from the firefight, straightening into a run as she exceeded the asari's likely range. The platform was both the quickest route to the other side of the lab and the most likely place to find Liara. Her feet pounded up the stairs.

Benezia had assumed a fighter's stance on the platform, no less elegant or dangerous for it, her face a hard, cold mask. One hand was extended towards Liara, who was frozen in place under her mother's biotic sway, a painful posture raised up on her toes as she was caught preparing a strike. Her blue eyes darted about, trapped, scared, but she didn't seem in immediate danger. Benezia was holding her with her free hand to her ear, murmuring into her comm.

Her merciless gaze swept over Shepard like a fire as she mounted the platform. Shepard had no idea what to expect; in trying to coddle Liara, she'd never asked after Benezia's combat capabilities. That was a mistake, not one she was likely to make again, but that didn't exactly help her now. So she simply raised her rifle and held down the trigger.

The rounds ricocheted off Benezia's barrier. She dropped her transmission and flung out her spare arm. The wave of dark energy caught Shepard around her middle and tossed her savagely against a support column, smacking her head once; and then, with a second jerk, over the railing. Shepard landed flat and hard on her back.

Sometime later, her vision faded back in. It could have been seconds or minutes. Her ears rang.

_Get up. _Her head spun. She stared at the ceiling, woozy. _Get up or you're dead. _

Shepard lurched a sitting position. Her hair fell down around her shoulders, and something wet trickled down her neck. No time to worry about it now.

Sound was returning, fuzzy at first. Bangs, warbles, and flashes of blue light came from the platform above. Liara was free. Apparently, trying to hold a barrier, a stasis field, and fling Shepard around like a rag doll exceeded the limits of Benezia's concentration. She stumbled to her feet just as one of the pair of absent asari commandos went sailing past her face.

She shot at her automatically before she even fully registered what was happening. The woman groaned as the rounds pinned her to the wall, and slumped into stillness.

"Nice one!" Wrex yelled, and threw a filing cabinet at another, unseen assailant. The right side of his face looked like it got a brush with one of their shotguns, trailing blood from a half dozen grazing wounds. He was grinning madly.

Shepard glanced at the platform, and then starting making progress towards Alenko and Williams' position, from the other direction. It was clear the only way they'd take Benezia was everyone together. She just hoped she'd read the matriarch's intentions towards Liara correctly. It didn't seem like she wanted to kill her.

The two commandos were still alive, fighting conservatively but expertly. The tactic was effective. With the advantage of barriers, familiarity with the lab's layout, and centuries of experience, they'd wear down her squad long before they tired themselves. They were not, however, expecting Shepard to come at them from the side. The asari were caught in a ninety-degree crossfire between the commander and her marines.

Shepard lay down a cover fire as she advanced, forcing the asari to retreat, but there was nowhere to go. She smiled. This was going to be over quickly.

And then one of the asari lit up like a blue beacon and streaked forward.

Shepard had no time to ponder what happened; one second the commando was the better part of eight meters away, and the next, she was in Shepard's face, swinging a biotically-augmented fist. The commander ducked under the blow and swept the asari's legs out from under her. They both hit the floor heavily. Her vision briefly went to gray.

The asari recovered first and scrambled on top of her, managing to circle her neck with her hands. Shepard was immediately concerned. The woman knew enough to press on the artery, not the windpipe, and kept her knee planted firmly on her center of mass to make herself difficult to dislodge. She had seconds at most.

They fell behind a cabinet, where nobody could see them to help. Her rifle was too large, no room for a shot, and battering her with it did no good. Her hand scrabbled at the ground, looking for something, anything, and among the jumble of strewn lab equipment, closed on something hard and slender.

Her hand swung up and drove the broken stirring rod straight through the asari's temple. Her violet eyes flew wide. Then her hands went slack and she collapsed on top of Shepard. The commander rolled her off with a groan.

Her head cleared the top of the cabinet just in time to see the second commando toss Alenko in the air and drive him back to the floor face-down with considerable force. Shepard ran at her, shooting. Most of the shots went wide and the rest hit her barrier, but the point was to get her attention.

She took a good long look at Shepard's face and her colleague on the ground, and spun her heel and ran.

Shepard let her go. Her team desperately needed to regroup. She ran to Alenko's location and hauled him to his feet. He bent double, coughing, as he tried to force air back into his lungs. A cracked rib or two seemed likely. "Shepard-"

"Where's Chief Williams?" she demanded.

He stumbled past her, back towards the lab benches. Shepard turned.

Williams was collapsed against the cabinetry, ashen faced and clutching at her side, between the chest guard and the leg plating. Her brown eyes lifted to Shepard's. "Sorry, ma'am. I got sloppy."

Alenko crouched in front of her and opened an omni-tool diagnostic, administering medi-gel. He, too, glanced at Shepard. "One got away."

"The rest are dead. Just Benezia now." Or so she hoped. Wrex seemed on a warpath. "Can you walk?"

The chief groaned. "I think so."

Alenko shook his head, examining the diagnostic results. "She's down for the count, ma'am. She can't fight."

Williams started to protest, but Shepard overrode her. "No, but we can't leave her here, not with a commando still running around." Shepard knelt down and held out her hand. "Come on. Easy does it."

"Commander." Alenko swallowed. "You're, uh, you're kind of bleeding. A lot."

She touched the back of her head. Her fingertips came away wet and sticky. It throbbed and oozed, but the room wasn't spinning anymore. "It's not bad. Just enthusiastic."

"It's going to get bad if you let it keep going like that. You've got it all down the back of your suit." Stubborn, like always.

Liara was still alone. Wrex was still across the room. Shepard squeezed a palmful of medi-gel into her hand and slapped it into the back of her scalp. It stung like hell and made a sticky mess of her hair. "There, done. Let's get the hell out of here."

They got Ash to her feet and started towards the platform. Halfway there, Shepard heard the sound of a hatch opening and feet- metallic feet- clattering on the lab floor. "Oh, shit."

Overhead, there was a whirring noise. The ceiling mounted turrets were coming to life. Shepard couldn't even find it in her to groan. "Double shit."

The comm crackled in her ear. Garrus. "Shepard?"

"Kind of busy at the mome-"

"Duck."

The turrets spun towards the inbound geth from all four corners of the lab. Shepard pulled Alenko and Williams into the shadow of the staircase a half-second before the guns opened fire. Dust and shrapnel filled the air.

She settled Ash on the floor, out of the line of fire, and shouted over the noise. "Stay put."

"Commander-"

"That's an order, Chief." Shepard risked her comm link, no longer caring if Benezia eavesdropped. "Wrex, get your ass to the platform, ASAP."

"On my way." He sounded quite pleased with himself. She hoped that meant both his commandos were dead. Maybe the last one too, if they were lucky.

She looked at Alenko. "She's got some kind of stasis field thing in addition to the telekinetic shit, and some serious biotic firepower. Get your shots in, keep your back to something solid, and stay the fuck out of her line of sight."

"Yes, ma'am." He drew his pistol and they took the stairs two at a time.

The platform was in chaos. Benezia stood at the heart of it, her skirts torn and tattered, revolving slowly on the spot as she tracked her daughter's movements. Sensing opportunity, she swept away an overturned table hiding Liara, and followed it immediately with a shot of raw biotic power. Liara darted desperately for a support column and the energy ball hit the concrete with enough kick to crack it.

Before the crack's report even began to fade, Liara leaned out from behind the column and hurled her own bolt directly at her mother. It ripped a gash along her arm. She responded with another stasis field, but missed her target, temporarily freezing a datapad in midair before she dismissed it as useless.

Shepard started shooting before she reached the top of the stairs. Most of the shots went wide, but it did get Benezia's attention and provide Liara some relief. Wrex clamored up the other side, shotgun firmly in hand, and on the lab floor below nothing but bits and pieces remained of the geth. The turrets spun in place and snicked to a stop, aimed squarely at the asari matriarch.

"It's over, Benezia," Shepard said, as her squad lined up alongside her, weapons drawn.

The matriarch made as if to attack. There was a bark of gunfire and suddenly her shoulder was bleeding freely, oozing through her fingers. She stared at her daughter in shock.

Liara's armor protected her from the worst, but she was sorely battered, plating chipped, webbing torn, and a greenish-purple bruise covered half her face, squeezing shut one eye. Still, her voice was strong.

"Until just now, I never believed it. The reports had to be mistaken. It had to be someone else. My mother would never do such a thing." Liara's pistol beeped softly as it finished its cooling cycle. "And then you attacked my friends and tried to kill me. Why, mother? Why did you help Saren instead of warning the Council?"

"These... people are not your friends," Benezia sneered. "They only wish to use you, because you're my only child. Why do you think you're standing here now? Compassion for your plight?"

"That's where you're wrong, mother." Her words rang in the silence of the lab. "These people you so disdain took me onto their ship and treated me like an equal when they had no reason to trust me. Shepard did everything in her power to dissuade me because she didn't want to put me through this." Liara wrapped her free hand around that holding the pistol, steadying her aim. "The only one in this room who ever defined my worth by your parentage is you."

Then she added, with a note of surprise and wonder, "And, once upon a time, me."

Shepard glanced between them, feeling rather unnaturally proud, and fixed her stare on Benezia. "Here's how it's going to be. You can start talking, now, or we can live with the satisfaction of depriving Saren of his favorite lieutenant. Your choice."

Benezia staggered against the tank, clutching at her wound, and shut her eyes. "Saren is unstoppable. My mind is filled with his light. Everything is clear."

"I guess that's it then." Shepard raised her gun a little higher, preparing for the shot.

The matriarch's bloodied hand rose to her forehead, leaving red streaks across her blue skin. She shook her head as though to clear it. "You will- you-" The proud woman half fell to her knees. Her fingers brushed the floor. "You must listen. Saren still whispers in my mind. I can fight his compulsions, but the indoctrination is… strong. We do not have much time."

Shepard meant to do this respectfully, but this was simply pathetic and it overrode her sense of decorum. "Holy fuck, lady, I wasn't born yesterday."

"No, wait-" She struggled for a breath. "I sealed away a part of my mind when I understood what was to be done with me. I… saved it, against a chance to destroy him. You are that chance. Please."

"Shepard," Liara said, urgently. Her unswollen eye was wide. "Please. She sounds… she sounds like herself."

The commander trusted nothing about this exercise, and disliked allowing a biotic who so recently handed all of them their asses simultaneously time to find her second wind, but whether for Liara or the sake of the information they desperately needed, what she said was, "We met Shiala on Feros. I know about indoctrination and I know that it can be fought. Prove it to me."

Benezia shuddered elaborately. "It is a terror to be trapped in your own mind. To beat upon the glass as your hands do the unspeakable. I was nothing but a tool for him."

Wrex grunted, impatient. Shepard quelled him with a glance. "Enough with the drama. Why were you here, Benezia? What did Saren want?"

"He sent me to find the location of the Mu Relay. Its position was lost thousands of years ago." She looked away, wrapped her arms about herself. "A star went supernova. Not its host star- I doubt even a relay could survive that fury- but close. The shockwave propelled the relay out of its system."

Alenko shifted his weight. "This relay takes him somewhere he wants to go?"

"I presume so." Benezia shook her head. "He was not so free with his reasons. The expulsion of the relay was chaotic. It could not be tracked, though goddess knows I tried to reconstruct its trajectory… And finding a cold object in space is next to impossible."

Shepard remained mindful of the time this was taking. Benezia stalled them once. It wouldn't work again. "Cut to the chase. What does this have to do with a rachni breeding lab? And what the hell- a _rachni breeding lab_? That's insane even by your colleague's standards."

"I understand your confusion. The answers that we sought lay in the memories of the rachni queen. She is old enough to remember." Benezia caressed the tank, gazing a long moment at the creature within, who had never turned its head from the tableau. "I used the gifts of my goddess to extract them."

Shepard was out of patience. "Give me the coordinates."

"Of course." She reached into a tattered pocket and extracted an OSD. "But you must hurry. I transmitted the data to Sovereign as soon as I had it, because I knew you'd soon arrive. You have to- ahh."

Benezia clutched her head. Liara started. "Wait-"

"His teeth are my ear. Fingers on my spine. You have to- you-" Benezia was almost sobbing, and seeing such an elegant and arrogant woman reduced to that unnerved Shepard more than anything else about this encounter. It spoke volumes about Saren's- or Sovereign's- power.

Liara stumbled forward, her pistol clanging to the floor. "Mother- please- don't leave- fight him-"

Benezia smiled, an expression sad and brave. "I'm sorry for how things ended between us. Perhaps I should have… You've always made me proud, Liara."

"_Nathaly, I also wanted to say this- I'm so very proud of you. I don't think I tell you that enough._" Shepard shoved Hannah's voice out of her head. "Liara, stay back."

Benezia met Shepard's eyes, stricken. "You knew what needs to be done. Perhaps I do not deserve it, but please, do me this service."

Shepard nodded, and replaced her rifle with a pistol. Smaller caliber, more precise. Cleaner.

Liara interposed herself. "No. Don't do this. We can save her."

It was unclear to whom she was pleading. Her mother gently pushed her aside. "I am sorry, my daughter. I am not entirely myself. I never will be again. Spare me this."

A sob escaped the archaeologist. Her voice broke. "Mother-"

Benezia stepped towards Shepard, half a step away, but her eyes were for Liara. "Good night, Little Wing. I will see you again with the dawn."

Shepard put the muzzle of her pistol up against the matriarch's chest and pulled the trigger before anyone had time to think about it.

It wasn't her first kill, at any range. Nor her hundredth, maybe not even her thousandth depending on how they were counted. But somehow it was wholly unexpected- the hot, sticky spray, coating her chest, splattering her face, the way the body fell back, twisting, the expression of surprise and fading light in Benezia's eyes. She had been a beautiful woman. Shepard had killed people who deserved it, and people who didn't, but she rarely had to deal with the families. Certainly never for weeks at a time, sharing her food and her nightmares, living shoulder-to-shoulder. Benezia was unique.

Some instinct in her caught the asari as she fell and laid her gently on the ground. The matriarch coughed. "No light? They always said there would be- ahhh."

Benezia tensed once, and was gone.

Shepard was aware of Liara sinking to the floor and taking the weight of the body from her. Everything seemed to be happening through a veil of cotton gauze, though she couldn't say if it was the magnitude of events or simply the head wound catching up to her. Alenko put his hand on her shoulder, drawing her back from mother and daughter.

Her hand tucked a lock of red hair behind her ear. She swallowed, and holstered the pistol. Benezia's blood was sticky on her cheek.

"You did what you had to do," Alenko was saying, pulling her away another step. Shepard couldn't tear her eyes from Liara, whose head was bent low over her mother's face. "It's going to be ok."

"No," Shepard said. "It won't."

They stood like that for god knew how long, until Wrex of all people interrupted with his usual lack of tact. He pointed crudely with his shotgun. "What are we going to do about that?"

The rachni queen, regal in her tank, stared out at them and wriggled her tentacle feelers.

Time sped back up to its usual rate. The atmosphere cleared. Shepard found she could think again. She took a breath. "Kaidan, go see to Ash. I'll take care of this mess."

His eyes searched her, checking whether she was ok, a gesture that at once warmed her because she truly wasn't fine, and irritated her in the same way a wounded dog snaps at anyone who comes near. But he merely nodded, squeezed her shoulder once, and slipped away. Liara was crying quietly over her mother. Shepard stepped around them both and approached the tank. Surreal was the only word she possessed for any of this.

The queen prodded at the glass with a tentacle. Shepard braced herself against the tank and ducked her head, examining the interior, trying to glean any information regarding Saren's broader plans. They couldn't have known the queen carried the Mu Relay coordinates when they located the egg. Otherwise, what was the point of establishing a lab, or a breeding program?

At the base of the stairs, on the far end of the lab, something stood and began dragging itself along the metal floor. Ker-thunk. Ker-thunk. Ker-thunk. Soft at first, but growing louder.

Immersed as she was, it took Shepard a minute to pick up on the noise. Her hand slid to her sidearm. "What the hell is that?"

Wrex turned towards it. "Want me to check it out?"

Shepard glanced at Liara, still on her knees bent over Benezia, and then towards the stairs where Alenko and Williams were out of sight. The team was being split again, purposefully or not. She didn't like it. "Guard the top. If you see something coming up, give a shout."

She resumed her inspection of the tank. The intent, unwavering way the rachni stared at her was starting to get under her skin.

"Shepard," Wrex said again. "This is- you need to see this."

The commander turned around, exasperated. "Wrex, just spit it-"

Her eyes widened. The irritation died on her lips. "-out."

One of the dead commandos, the bullet hole in her head clearly visible above her closed eyes, was shambling towards her, tripping over her own feet but making steady progress. Wrex had his shotgun fixed on her back, and the way she knew he was truly unnerved was that he waited for orders instead of simply shooting the expired asari. The problem was, Shepard wasn't certain which ones to give. How do you kill something already dead?

"I am so tired," she said, thinking of the geth and the husks both, and drawing her gun for good measure, "Of fighting a war against this kind of zombie crap."

The woman dragged past Shepard and arrayed herself against the tank, no more than a meter from the muzzle of Shepard's pistol. Her head lolled on her shoulders until it was oriented in a normal speaking posture, and her eyes flickered open. The voice that flowed from her lips was like no asari Shepard ever heard- low, echoing, shaky on the ends of the words, and cadenced like someone speaking for the very first time. "This one. Serves as our voice. We cannot sing. Not in these low spaces. Your musics are colorless."

Behind the asari, the queen's six mandibles flared about her maw.

Shepard glanced between them, not lowering her gun. "To whom am I speaking?"

The asari stared forward unseeing. "We are the mother. We sing for those left behind. The children you thought silenced."

Even Liara looked up at that. Wrex couldn't hold his peace. "Shoot the damn thing. That'll shut her mouth."

Shepard looked around the lab, half-expecting rachni soldiers to pour from the vents at any moment. "Did you order your… children to attack the science team?"

The dead woman shook as she talked, jelly in a pan, like her skeleton was little more than a bag of bones. "No. The children are beyond our songs. Stolen from us as they were birthed, before we could teach them to sing. They are lost to silence."

More footsteps on the stairs. Shepard whirled. Williams staggered onto the platform, assisted by Alenko. He looked exasperated. "Sorry, ma'am. I told her what happened and she insisted."

Williams made it to the railing and leaned against it heavily, pointing. "What the hell is that?"

"Apparently rachni queens can speak through the dead." Shepard shook her head. "I don't understand it either."

The asari shambled forward a step. "What are children without a mother? End the suffering of our lost ones. Though it grieves us, they cannot be saved. They will cause only harm."

Alenko raised his eyebrows. "Catch me up?"

Shepard looked over her shoulder. "Rachni grow up crazy without influence from their queen. That's why the ones in the labs are acting so recklessly."

He shrugged. "Makes sense. Lock a baby in a closet for sixteen years and it's not going to be very sane, either."

Somehow, the asari's bizarre intonation became almost sad. "These needle-men. They raised our children as beasts of war. Claws with no songs of their own. Fear has shattered their minds."

"Eliminating them won't be a problem." Shepard tried to move back to the subject at hand. "Saren stole your eggs and Benezia stole the history of the Mu Relay. Was there anything else?"

"No." The asari's dead eyes twitched in her skull, looking in different directions. "What will you sing? Will you release us? Are we to fade away once more?"

Wrex glanced towards the ceiling. "Those tanks. They look like acid. Strong acid judging by those warning labels."

Liara followed them with her eyes. "Their lines lead into the tank. Shepard, you're not seriously considering this?"

Shepard, too, stared at the lines, her arms folded, thinking dark and ugly thoughts. "How did you survive the war?"

"We- I know nothing of the war. We heard discordance, songs the color of oily shadows… tones from space hushing all voices, forcing singers to resonate with its own sour yellow note. We were but an egg, hearing Mother cry in our dreams. The sky now is silent. We wish only to find a secret place, to teach our children harmony."

Shepard had been a spectre for three and a half months. In that time many things had occurred requiring immediate strategic decisions, and less urgent political ones. But politics was fluid and strategy was only calculus dressed in colors of blood. For the first time, she felt the full mantle of the office on her shoulders, here in this trashed lab.

She wanted nuance. She wanted to be conflicted. A decision with consequences like this, the final death of an entire race, should require heavy deliberation. But there were only two thoughts in her head. _The queen doesn't know what happened in the Rachni Wars. What is she going to think when she finds out? And the reapers are coming. There is no way, none, the galaxy survives a two front war of that magnitude._

But those were simply nightmares, dreams from the beacon of Eden Prime patched together with shoddy rationale. There was no direct evidence. How sure was she? How sure could anyone be? Surer than anything she'd ever felt in her life, but that was a gut thing, emotional, not logical- but it undeniably stemmed from the same instinct that kept her alive through nine kinds of hell over the years.

In her tank, the queen waited, her tentacles waving gently. Shepard regarded her.

Wrex checked his shotgun. "Let's get this _over _with, Shepard. These bastards had their chance. That war was won with krogan blood and we scraped them off our boots long ago."

Williams slid to the floor with a small groan of pain, helped by Alenko, who brought up another diagnostic. She batted it away. Her head rolled towards the tank. "I'm with Wrex. Fuck this bug shit."

Liara looked from one face to another, the pitch of her voice rising. "We cannot be considering this. Shepard, this is genocide. The Council of fourteen hundred years ago went too far. We can make this right."

Shepard rubbed her eyes and forced patience. "I know what this is, Liara."

"Could leave it to the Council," Alenko suggested tentatively. "They're going to want a long hard look at this place anyway."

She dropped her hand and went to the terminal. "No. This has to be done, and the Council doesn't have the stomach."

Liara scrambled to her feet. "Shepard-"

Her expression was a solid leaden wall. "You've had a hard day, but this isn't about right and wrong. Of course this is wrong. But I can't risk the galaxy on the goodwill of a species that has no reason to like us, and we can't fight rachni and reapers at the same time. We'll lose, and that'll be the end of everything, for every race, not just one."

"You can't know that-"

"I _do _know that," she said sharply. "This is kind of my field."

The queen as heard through the dead asari commando was alarmed. "Are we really so frightening? You seek our silence because of a shadow of a threat?"

"I'm truly sorry." Shepard located the controls for the acid tanks in the terminal interface. "I'm aware that doesn't mean anything."

Her voice was suffused with rage. "We will not embrace the great silence!"

Her puppet shambled forward and tried to knock Shepard away from the console. Unfortunately for the queen, the dead lacked stamina. Shepard threw her to the floor one-handed. "Restrain that thing."

"Gladly," said Wrex, coming forward and planting one giant boot on the commando's chest. She struggled like a pinned bug.

Liara made one last attempt. "Goddess, Shepard, _think_. This is something you will carry until you die."

"It can join the collection." Shepard's hand hovered over the switch. "Believe me, Liara, if there is a goddess, she gave up on my soul a long time ago."

She pressed down. There was a rushing sound, and clouds of green smoke filled the tank, partially obscuring the queen. She skittered away from the shower of acid but there was nowhere to run. Shepard folded her arms and waited without looking away, not even after the queen's screams of rage turned to screams of agony, allowing the images to burn into her memory. She didn't deserve to be spared witness. The rachni held her gaze to the very last, laced with such hatred and pain that it should have left Shepard a pile of ashes, until her eyes ran down her face like runny eggs and the smoke covered her entirely.

When it was over, some minutes later, nothing but thick black sludge remained. Sprinklers of water activated within the tank and began to wash it away. Nobody spoke.

Shepard let out a breath, thinking she should feel _something_, satisfaction, regret, guilt- but all she felt was tired, and not even soul-tired so much as the standard weariness of someone who'd been awake and fighting terrain first and monsters later for over twenty two hours. She ran a hand over her hair, catching her fingers in the sticky medi-gel. Her head ached horribly. "Alright. We need to clear out the last of the rachni soldiers- maybe the lab has a protocol- and get Williams patched up before we head back down the mountain."

"I'm fine, Commander," Williams objected from the floor.

She ignored her. "How's the weather? Can we order a shuttle evac?"

Alenko tapped at his omni-tool. "Negative, ma'am. If anything the storm's still getting worse."

"Copy that." She moved on to the next problem. "Liara?"

The asari still wouldn't look at her. Shepard tried to ignore that, too. "Liara, I need to know what to do with your mother."

Her voice was quiet and seemed to come from very far away. She curled in herself, arms wrapped around her waist, shoulders slumped, making her body as small a thing as possible. "I can't just leave her here."

"Understood. Wrex?"

He rolled his eyes, stubborn. "She's an enemy. A defeated one, Saren's toy, not worthy of songs. We should leave her to rot."

"And when we kill your mother, you can dictate how we handle it." Shepard left no room for argument. "Pick her up and move out."

She and Alenko got Ash propped up between them. The bleeding had stopped, but she was still in a bad way. Wrex retrieved the body, though not without an excess of snorting and muttered comments. Liara trailed behind lost to her own thoughts.

The team wound back through the tunnels of Rift Station, this time avoiding the maintenance shaft, and almost made it down the stairs to the med bay before Shepard, entirely without warning, stumbled and nearly dropped their gunnery chief.

"Commander!" Alenko said, struggling to keep Ash from tumbling down the stairs.

"I'm…" Shepard's head was reeling. For a half-second there, she completely blacked out. "I think I'll just go in and sit down for a moment."

Dr. Cohen was clearly surprised to see them. His eyes widened as he took in the sticky refuse splayed across Shepard and her armor. "Spectre, what on earth-"

She brushed by him and perched on the edge of one of the lab tables, speaking past the nausea that was now playing gleeful counterpart to her headache. "Cohen, you have a VI operating theater installed?"

"Yes, but-"

"Prep it. I've got a marine who requires its services." She nodded to Alenko. "Get her settled."

He ma'am'd her and helped Ash through the hatch. Cohen made another stab at resuming control of his med bay. "Commander Shepard, I must insist-"

Wrex came in hauling Benezia's body. "Where the hell do I set this thing down?"

"We've been putting all the bodies in the auxiliary station." Cohen pointed. "But-"

The krogan ambled in the indicated direction, closely followed by Liara, who kept her head down and her expression hidden. Shepard put her finger to her ear and activated her comm. "Tali, Garrus, it's over. Come on home. Bring Olar if you can find him."

"Thank goodness," said Tali, relieved. "Is Chief Williams-"

"I think she'll be fine. We're going to plug the leaks before we roll. Shepard out." She looked up at Cohen. "I'm not asking for miracles. You can suture?"

He drew himself up, calming. "Yes. I'm sadly out of practice, however."

"The VI can put her under and find damaged tissue. All you need to do is stitch, glue, and medi-gel the crap out of anything that's bleeding, enough to keep her stable when we drive to the port. We'll have our own expert physician attend to the permanent repairs when we're back aboard ship." She gave him a firm nod that made her vision fade momentarily at the edges. "I have every confidence in you. Also, I may need a head scan."

Cohen nodded. "I'll just… go see to your friend, then. Excuse me."

He hurried off. Garrus and Tali entered the med bay, along with the stout volus. Olar peered up at her. "What do you want?"

Shepard got straight to business. "Unless you want an antimatter warhead shot straight up your ass, we need to knock out the remaining rachni. Soon. Other than sinking the lab, which sounds like it takes awhile without guaranteeing the rachni will die, are there any protocols that will terminate out-of-control experiments?"

His ventilator hissed and clunked as he considered. "Yes. A neutron purge should accomplish what you need." Another breath, in and out, accompanied by the heavy whine of machinery. "You will need to search for the access codes to activate the protocol. I don't have them. And it can only be initiated from within the hot labs. The terminal is right outside the elevator, across a foyer."

"Understood." Her eyes drifted to Wrex as he returned. "Garrus, Wrex, go take care of this problem. Evacuating the lab is out of the question with the available vehicles, so if this doesn't work, a lot more people are going to die. Where's Liara?"

Wrex jerked his hand towards the auxiliary bay. "With her mom. It's giving me the creeps."

"You have to get to that hot lab anyway." She looked at both of them in turn. "Good luck."

"We'll get it done," Garrus promised, and they herded Han Olar with them as they left.

Shepard closed her eyes and rubbed her forehead, massaging her temple. She wasn't quite brave enough yet to feel the damage at the back. Tali touched her arm. "Shepard? Are you alright?"

"Nasty bump on the head." A half-smile, forced. "That's all."

"We were watching on the security feeds while we tried to hack the defenses. It looked brutal in there."

"We accomplished our objective and everyone made it out. Might not sound like much, but that's good day." Shepard glanced back towards the hatch, trying to believe it. Liara was only just visible at the edges of the window with her back to them. "You might want to go see our archaeologist. She could use a friend right now."

"You should go see her, too."

She remembered the shock on Benezia's face as she pulled the trigger, and the heartache in Liara's voice as she begged her to spare the queen. "I don't think she wants to see me right now."

"Alright." Tali took a steadying breath. "I'm glad Ash is going to be ok."

"Me too." She watched Tali move into the next room and put her arm around Liara. This was why Shepard's friends numbered so few; she took so much and gave back so little. Without Liara, they'd be nowhere close to understanding reapers or the coming war. And today she'd not only killed her mother but made her an accomplice to genocide. Shepard wouldn't blame her in the slightest if the next time they were on the Citadel, she left and never came back.

The hatch to the OR split open, ejecting Cohen and Alenko. The doctor stripped off his gloves and reached for a fresh pair. "Chief Williams is undergoing the anesthetic now. We need to give it time to suffuse her system and stabilize. Meanwhile, let's have a look at that head injury of yours."

He set up the scanner equipment while Alenko leaned against the end of the exam table. "You just can't seem to stop getting hit over the head."

"Very funny."

"No, seriously, I used to wonder why you were so hard-headed, but now I can see it's just a survival mechanism."

"Keep talking, L.T. I can make sure the _Normandy _never restocks the frozen lasagna you seem to like so much."

Cohen shifted her head and advised her to hold still. She stared straight ahead as he took the data.

The scanner beeped. Shepard read the output on the terminal with faint disbelief. "Cranial fracture?"

"Small one, yes." Cohen opened a drawer and withdrew a large pair of surgical shears. "We're not equipped to do much about that, but you've also got a number of small fragments of glass imbedded in your scalp which must be excised."

_The asari's shot raining glass from a shattered cabinet down on her head. Benezia throwing her. Waking up on the floor seeing stars._ The combination must have crushed them into her skin. Shepard stifled a groan. "Great."

"Hold still," Cohen said, and raised the shears. "We need to clear the site of the wound to get a better look."

Shepard fixed him with the kind of stare that could freeze plasma. "You'd best not be putting those things anywhere near my hair."

He paled. Alenko intervened. "Go deal with Ash, doc. Worry about this later."

Cohen gave Shepard a last nervous glance and hastened to the OR. Alenko went to the medical supply cart flanking the exam table and opened a drawer, withdrawing a pair of long-handled tweezers, a sterile metal pan, and a tube of surgical glue. "Lean forward."

Shepard eyed the supplies with a fair amount of skepticism. "Do you have any medical training at all?"

"First responder field training and a truckload of experience disassembling tiny electronic components. I'll manage." His mouth turned up at the corner.

Shepard felt suddenly quite self-conscious. It wasn't doubt- pulling glass out of a scalp couldn't possibly be complicated- but her reaction to the doctor's scissors had been instinctual, immediate, and more revealing than she liked. It was only hair. She bit her lip.

"Look," Alenko said, shrugging. "You can let me give it a stab, or you can wait for the microbiologist to come back and spend another ten years growing your hair out again. Your choice."

Vulnerability and vanity warred. Vanity won. She heaved a grudging sigh. "Fine."

She bent forward as requested, eyes riveted to the floor and her face burning. She was glad he couldn't see it. His fingers moved through the heavy strands of her thick red hair, searching for shards, a gentle touch but inevitably pulling a bit here and there. "Holy shit, Shepard, this is a mess."

The medi-gel did a wonderful job of gobbing it all together; it was worse than bubble gum, though easier to dissolve. And she could only imagine the strange tic-tac-toe inscribed by the shards. She swallowed and attempted a weak joke. "Yeah, I'm kind of a magnet for catastrophe."

There came a soft clink as Alenko picked up the tweezers, a sharp tug that left her wincing, a high-pitched rattle as the glass hit the pan, and then the wet, numbing chill of the glue as he smeared it over the cut. His hands resumed their search, slowly roaming over her scalp. "How'd you end up with a head full of glass anyway?"

It was strangely intimate. His fingers were starting to feel nice, tangled against her head, as the glue numbed the pain. It was a long time since someone knotted their fingers in her hair. She firmly ignored that particular observation. "One of the asari shot out a glass cabinet front right over me, and then Benezia slammed me into the ground head-first."

"Ouch." He started tugging at an especially stubborn bit of debris. "I told you wrecking your shield generator to power those servers was a bad idea."

She forced herself to hold still despite the discomfort and snorted. "Alright. You've had several hours now to think about it. What's your better plan?"

"Not wrecking your shield generator to power those servers."

"So, no better ideas, then. Check. Ow!" A trickle of something hot ran down her neck. She clamped her hand to the back of her head without thinking and twisted around. "Are you biopsying me now, too?"

He presented the object clutched in the tweezer's grasp. "When hair buns attack?"

Shepard took the bloody hairpin between her thumb and forefinger, in utter disbelief. "I've been wearing it like that in combat for almost a decade. This is a first."

"It cut you pretty good. Move your hand." He wiped away the blood and used more of the glue.

Shepard sat through it silently, so embarrassed she could die, wishing she'd let the doctor do what he wanted- wishing that she'd grabbed the shears and done it herself. She was a naval officer, a marine, a spectre- where the hell did balking at a medically mandated haircut come into that? This was a waste of both their time. There were still rachni running wild through the facility and other loose ends to tie up. Her friend just lost her mother and she was sitting her worried about losing her _hair_. It was pathetic.

But it was the only part of her that was even a little pretty. And the fact that mattered was pathetic, too.

Alenko paused in his work. "Sorry, I'm trying not to hurt, but some of these pieces are really wedged in here."

Shepard was confused. "It's not hurting. Stings a little."

"Your shoulders are really tense, so I thought-"

"Oh. Sorry." Shepard forcibly relaxed. "I can't help thinking I should be working, not sitting here doing… this."

"You have a cranial fracture. You weren't going anywhere."

Another bit of glass tinkled in the pan. She stammered a bit. "We should go sit with Ash-"

"The OR's a sterile environment. We'll see her when she's out. And we're right here if something happens." He tugged at a particularly large piece.

Shepard bit her lip all the way through extraction, wondering how Wrex and Garrus were coming along and almost wishing they'd radio for backup, anything to focus attention away from this room.

Alenko was almost amused at her rigidity. "What's the problem?"

"This is… this is very undignified," she said at last, flustered.

"Stop being so defensive," he chided, prodding at her head with the tweezers. "Perfect people are boring, anyway. The undignified parts, the human parts- that's the good stuff."

Her cheeks flushed a deeper red, hidden by the hanks of hair draped to either side. "You of all people lecturing me on being defensive."

"Hey, I know what I'm talking about, right?"

"Too damn well," Shepard muttered. She couldn't help laughing a little. "God, we're like the poster children for repression."

"Well, don't tell DMHS. They love a good charity case." Another tug, another piece added to the pan.

"Wouldn't dream of it." Her head chose that moment to throb with pain, a lance that reached down into her stomach and churned the acid. She rubbed it with a small groan. "I'm not on death's door or anything, but between you and me, L.T., I am feeling extremely unwell right now."

"Head injury, moderate blood loss, sleep deprivation, traumatic mission, and I think the last time we ate anything was a couple of candy bars back in the Mako. I wonder why." He shook his head. "I'm not feeling great, either. That commando sure knocked the wind out of me, and…. This one's going to stick with me a long time. I don't think I've really started processing it yet. Hell of a way to spell mission accomplished."

She let him finish removing the next piece of glass before asking the question. "No chain-of-command bullshit- do you think it was the right call?"

"Benezia asked you to do it. It was the only way she could be free. I'm sorry Liara had to be there- you were right about that too. It was awful." He sucked in a breath. "As for the queen… I don't know. That's a once in a lifetime situation. I don't know how you deal with it. Usually, I'm glad I can pass the buck up the chain on the hard calls. You don't have many superiors left to give you orders anymore."

"Nice way to evade the question," she observed sardonically.

"What you said about a two-front war made sense. I trust you, Shepard. So do a lot of people who know better than me."

Shepard started to reply, but without warning the floor shook hard, violent enough to knock the pan full of glass over. "What the hell?"

He backed away from the table, hands held up. "I think we got most of it. Go."

"Check on Ash." That kind of jarring could be catastrophic during surgery. "I'm going to find out what happened."

She hurried up the stairs, ignoring the way her vision was going fuzzy at the edges and her stomach threatened mutiny with every step. Her wild appearance garnered several startled glances from the Binary Helix survivors as she dragged herself to the security barricade. "Ventralis, I need a status update."

He turned and started to speak, but when he caught sight of her, he could only gape. Her mouth settled into a hard line. "Yeah, I look like shit, but you're not asking me to the fucking prom, you're giving me an emergency report on our security systems. Start talking."

That snapped him out of it. "Seemed like it came from the hot labs two floors down, ma'am. Our scanners aren't reporting any breaches. I can't say I appreciate how your men overpowered central security."

"It was necessary. I didn't have time to argue the point with you." Shepard wanted nothing more than to sit down and close her eyes for a spell, but she was unwilling to let it show.

Ventralis frowned. "What the hell happened down there, anyway?"

"Benezia's dead," Shepard said succinctly. "Ten-century-old asari matriarchs make formidable opponents. Do not recommend."

"Lady Benezia is…" He swore. "Spectre, a few hours ago I'd have you detained for that."

"You could try." Shepard didn't disguise her evaluation of his odds of success. "But you won't, because that turian her sleeper agent killed was one of yours, and you're not stupid so you've probably worked out that when she left her orders, she hoped you'd slow us down."

He shook his head, not disagreeing. "I always figured if I met a spectre it'd be like in the movies, you know?"

"Brawn, body counts, and lots of good one-liners? Somebody who just gets in the way of the people doing the real work?" she asked, eyebrows raised.

"Something like that." He gave her a sidelong glance. "I didn't think they'd be crazy amazon women who manage smart, capable, and right all at the same time. I'm sorry."

Shepard rolled her head tiredly. Her neck was getting in on the action now, too, a deep stabbing ache of its own, but her reply retained a certain cocky airiness. "Don't let it get you down. For the moment in spectre-land I'm one of a kind."

She didn't know why she was trying so hard. Because years down the road, when Ventralis was telling his cronies about the Time He Met A Spectre, he'd say she took down an asari matriarch like squashing a spider, no big deal? There was an unspoken rule to make it look easy, no matter what, because weakness was abhorrent and if people knew how hard it actually was to keep the galaxy safe it would scare them to death- one more thing it was her duty to spare them- but joking like this made her feel twelve years old.

The elevator opened. A rather ruffled-looking Garrus and Wrex exited the carriage. Wrex wore the biggest shit-eating grin Shepard ever saw in her life. "We got them. All of them."

She took in the gore plastered over his hardsuit with a jaded eye. "What, you head-butted them all to death?"

"Not quite," Garrus said. "We got the codes for the neutron purge- long story- but once we started the timer it was like we dropped a cluster-bomb of rachni pheromones. I don't know how they knew, but they swarmed the room, coming out of every vent and crevice."

"We had to fight our way out." Wrex radiated contentment. "Only three minutes, and there had to be hundreds of them between us and the exit. I never thought in all my years I'd get a chance to fight the old enemy, like my ancestors before me. This is a good day to be krogan."

Shepard was beyond skeptical of this story, particularly the numbers cited, but decided against stealing Wrex's glory. The day was long enough. "Chief Williams is in surgery. Once she's stable, we hit the road. Try to find something to eat and get some rest, if you can."

Garrus looked her up and down. "I could say the same to you."

Nothing sounded better, but she sighed. "Wouldn't that be nice."

She was positive Chakwas would have apoplexy if she did much of anything before allowing the doctor to check her over. They returned to the barracks.

From there, events started to move quickly. Ash sailed through her surgery with flying colors, though Cohen looked like he'd aged three years by the end of it. Shepard tried to eat a microwave cup of soup from the scientists' stores, promptly threw it up, and gave up in favor of an IV bag of glucose followed by one of saline. Cohen tried to stop her and then tried to help her, but she growled him away. Shepard was certain she had more practice at finding a vein than him and she had enough new bruises already.

Scans confirmed the neutron purge had done its job. The hot labs would be unusable until a clean-up team could be summoned, but Port Hanshan agreed to call off the antimatter strike. The interim administrator seemed more relieved than disappointed. Shepard had some faint hope his tenure would be less punctuated by personal greed. For her part, she couldn't put this planet behind her fast enough. With luck nothing would ever force her to return.

They got Benezia into a body bag- a facility as remote as Peak 15 had to be prepared for anything- and trudged back to the Makos. Ash complained bitterly the whole way, stuck in a wheelchair, shutting up only when Shepard threatened to exchange it for a body board. Garrus joked that they could prop her up on the roof to scare off wildlife and lingering geth. Wrex added that they'd probably run just to get away from the endless talking, which caused Williams to throw a roll of gauze at his head. Tali cautioned her to take it easy, while Alenko hung back with Liara, so she wouldn't have to sit by herself.

And that was the problem, Shepard realized, as they began the journey back to port. This wasn't a crew anymore, if it ever had been. The seven of them were something else entirely. She was the commander, sure, but only in the most cursory way imaginable. They watched each other's backs, squabbled like family, and took the piss out of each other on a regular basis- but somehow it worked. Contrary to every navy tenet about professionalism, it worked.

The two Mako teams were forced to reorganize. Neither Shepard nor Williams were in any condition to drive. Liara was out as well, for other reasons, and Mako controls weren't designed for operation by someone of Wrex's size. Tali confessed that while she could pilot a variety of small ships, she'd never driven a land vehicle in her life. That left Garrus and Alenko.

As Shepard settled in the back with Liara, the lieutenant fired up the engine. He caught her expression in the reflection of the windshield. "Relax. I'm not going to drive us off a cliff."

"There are two types of people in this world. Those who can touch my car and those I don't want driving on the same planet as my car."

"I've sat in your car," he protested.

"Yeah, and you stiffened up and leaned the wrong way every time we took a hard turn." Shepard rolled her eyes; a mistake, as her stomach instantly threatened rebellion once more. "You are good at many things, but this? You have no instinct for this. And don't give me some bullshit about being a station kid because so am I and I am crazy good."

"That bump on your head is making you say the silliest things." He rolled the Mako out of the garage.

"We are all going to die," she pronounced, stoically.

Tali turned around in the navigator's seat. "Don't worry, Shepard. I know where the override switch is."

"No faith, any of you," Alenko groused.

The jests died as they got out on the ice and Alenko and Tali both were consumed in keeping them on the road. They were following Garrus. The snow had not let up, but it was mid-morning now, and the sunlight was beginning to brighten the air to a lighter shade of gray.

Shepard tried to put the long drop into the valley below from her mind. She and the asari were wedged in beside the gun sights. Liara curled into a corner, her head bumping lightly against the bulkhead with every jounce, expressionless. Benezia's body lay across from them, on the other side of the turret, sealed in its black bag.

The bruise on Liara's face had grown only more spectacular as hours passed since the fight. After awhile, Shepard reached over, gingerly. "Has anyone looked at that?"

Liara flinched away. "A warp got too close to me. The distortion drew my blood towards it. All it requires for treatment are the attentions of time."

Shepard didn't say anything, but continued to explore the bruise, gently brushing her fingers over it. Liara consented to the evaluation with icy dignity, not moving even when Shepard pried open her swollen eye. "Well, it's not pretty, but you seem to be right. No lasting harm."

She moved away. Liara kept still. Shepard sighed. "That was no way to live, what Saren was doing to your mother. Or his ship, or whatever. If you hate me for it, I under-"

Liara did look at her then. "I don't hate you. I hate her." Her face swung towards the bag. "She's the one who did this. She knew she was walking into a deadly situation with Saren and she didn't think what it would do to me if she disappeared. She never did, and I never saw it. I thought it was about me. Goddess, what a fool I am."

"You're not a fool." Shepard draped her hands over her knees as the Mako jounced along and looked at Liara. "You're a daughter who wants her mother to be the same person as when you were five years old, and the damndest thing about it is realizing she never changed- you did."

Liara covered her eyes with her hand and bowed her head. Shepard kept talking even though it seemed like a bad idea. She didn't know what else to do. Silence worried her. "My mother was such a hero to me, you know, larger than life. She'd take me aboard her ship when they were in port and everyone would salute her, like she was really something, and the skipper used to sit me in the CIC and let me play with the galaxy map. And I got older and realized that for her that was just another way of showing off. Perfect officer, perfect family."

"My mother kept me out of her professional life. It took me forever to realize how important she was." She made a little sound that might have been halfway between a laugh and a sob. "I was at school and I was telling a friend about a bonding ceremony we attended. The food was so beautiful. I'd smuggled away a cake to show her." She shook her head. "It was for the then-Councilor, the one before Tevos. It wasn't until I saw that everyone in the classroom was staring at me that I realized most families didn't get that kind of invitation."

Shepard reached over and took her hand. "She protected you. In her last lucid moments, her heart was with you. They're not perfect mothers, either of them, but they did their best."

And then Liara, slow as time, tired as dust, simply lay down on the floor of the Mako, her head lying in Shepard's lap. Shepard, startled and touched, wasn't sure how to react. Liara had no hair to stroke, so she settled for resting her hand against her head crenellations. Liara didn't cry or even sigh; just lay there, quietly.

So it was that they made their way down the mountain, back to the _Normandy_, with Liara cradled gently against Shepard's armor, still sticky with Benezia's blood.


End file.
